Every year, the Oxford University Press designates a ‘word of the year.’ This year, it’s ‘rage bait’, a term referring to social media content that’s supposed to elicit strong, negative reactions.
Why would anyone want to antagonise the public? Well, content creators on social media make more money if their channel gets more viewers, so they don’t necessarily care how they get them.
Rage bait often works because humans have a negativity bias, which makes us react more strongly to negative stimuli than positive ones. That’s a good thing in general, because it helps us to flee from dangers in our environment – but it doesn’t always work to our advantage in the online world. Rage bait can make us feel angry, stressed, and upset, even though nothing bad has happened. It can also encourage people to harden their views, and to feel that they should join forces with others with similar views, to protect themselves from the perceived threat – which might be the rage baiter themselves, or whoever the rage baiter is railing against.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong per se with social media, but it does help to understand the processes behind our emotional reactions and to understand that while we don’t have control over what other people say, we can manage our own responses to it.
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