I keep seeing people call all sorts of things that absolutely should not be “rage” inducing rage bait and I’m confused how this term has evolved, what does it mean when something like a dumb question or a slightly censored meme is now “rage bait”? To me rage bait means something explicitly made to make you made, playing the devils advocate or purposefully edgy and polarizing content but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. To me it it feels like the way woke just means anything I don’t like, is the other side of the coin rage bait is also anything I don’t like I just don’t happen to be a conservative? Sorry if this post is rage bait, I’m genuinely asking and I have a touch of the ‘tism.
Any negative speech: especially harsh, slanderous or divisive, that provokes equally charged emotional responses.
One other thing I’d like to add: It’s not just that rage-inducing content is out there, that’s always been there. It’s that it gets rewarded by big tech, by making sure that highly responded content, gets pushed to the top.
Capitalist tech companies have an incentive to platform this content because it increases the on-site time, and their own popularity, to the detriment of their users mental health. It also helps them push pro-capitalist narratives that atomize and isolate people who should be united by a shared humanity and class status.
tbh we’re somewhat guilty of this in lemmy also, with the
Activesort allowing new comments to bump posts to the top of feeds.The only real way to fight it, is to keep an eye out for these toxic / combative threads and posters, and remove them if necessary. Since we don’t capitalist incentives to keep people on site or serve ads, it serves no benefit to keep rage-bait posters around.