Rage-Baiting: Understanding its Mechanics and Profitability

Content creator Winta Zesu, who earned $150,000 (£117,000) last year through social media posts, states, “I get a lot of hate”. A distinguishing factor for Winta compared to other influencers is that the engagement on her videos and posts, which generates traffic, frequently stems from user anger. The 24-year-old clarifies, “Every single video of mine that has gained millions of views is because of hate comments.” Her videos portray the existence of a New York City model whose primary challenge is excessive beauty. Many commenters are unaware that Winta is embodying a fictional persona. Speaking to the BBC from her New York City apartment, she notes, “I get a lot of nasty comments, people say ‘you’re not the prettiest girl’ or ‘please bring yourself down, you have too much confidence’.” Winta belongs to an expanding cohort of online creators who produce ‘rage bait’ content. The objective of this content is straightforward: to create videos, memes, and posts designed to provoke intense anger in other users, thereby accumulating thousands or millions of shares and likes. This practice diverges from clickbait, its internet counterpart, which employs a headline to entice readers to access a video or article. Marketing podcaster Andrea Jones observes: “A hook reflects what’s in that piece of content and comes from a place of trust, whereas rage-baiting content is designed to be manipulative.” However, the influence of negative content on human psychology is intrinsically ingrained, according to Dr William Brady, a researcher focusing on brain-technology interactions. He clarifies, “In our past, this is the kind of content that we really needed to pay attention to,” adding, “so we have these biases built into our learning and our attention.” The proliferation of rage-baiting content has occurred concurrently with major social media platforms increasing payments to creators for their contributions. These creator programs, which compensate users for likes, comments, and shares, and permit sponsored posts, have been associated with this increase. Marketing podcaster Andréa Jones elaborates: “If we see a cat, we’re like ‘oh, that’s cute’ and scroll on. But if we see someone doing something obscene, we may type in the comments ‘this is terrible’, and that sort of comment is seen as a higher quality engagement by the algorithm.” She expresses concern, stating, “The more content a user creates the more engagement they get, the more that they get paid.” She continues, “And so, some creators will do anything to get more views, even if it is negative or inciting rage and anger in people,” concluding, “It leads to disengagement.” Rage bait content manifests in various formats, ranging from extreme food recipes to critiques of popular musicians. However, during a year marked by global elections, especially in the US, rage-baiting has also extended into the political sphere. Dr Brady remarks: “There has been a spike in the build up to elections, because it’s an effective way to mobilize your political group to potentially vote and take action.” He points out that the American election featured minimal policy discussion, concentrating instead on outrage, further stating, “it was hyper-focused on ‘Trump is horrible for this reason’ or ‘Harris is horrible for that reason’.” An inquiry conducted by BBC social media investigations correspondent Marianna Spring revealed that certain users on X received “thousands of dollars” from the platform for disseminating content such as misinformation, AI-generated images, and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Experts monitoring these trends express apprehension that an excessive volume of negative content might cause the general public to “switch off.” Ariel Hazel, an assistant professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan, states, “It can be draining to have such high emotions all the time.” She adds, “It turns them off the news environment and we’re seeing increased amounts of active news avoidance around the world.” Concerns also exist regarding the normalization of anger in offline contexts and the detrimental impact on public trust in digital content. Social psychologist Dr William Brady comments, “Algorithms amplify outrage, it makes people think it’s more normal.” He further explains: “What we know from certain platforms like X is that politically extreme content is actually produced by a very small fraction of the user base, but algorithms can amplify it as if they were more of a majority.” The BBC reached out to the primary social media platforms concerning rage bait content on their services but received no replies. In October 2024, Meta executive Adam Mosseri addressed “an increase in engagement-bait” on Threads, stating, “we’re working to get it under control.” Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s competing platform X recently declared an alteration to its Creator Revenue Sharing Program. This change will compensate creators based on engagement from premium users of the site, including likes, replies, and reposts, a shift from the previous model where compensation was tied to ads viewed by premium users. TikTok and YouTube also enable users to monetize their posts or share sponsored content; however, they possess regulations that permit the demonetization or suspension of profiles disseminating misinformation. X lacks comparable guidelines regarding misinformation. Returning to Winta Zesu’s New York City apartment, the discussion, occurring days prior to the US election, shifts to political topics. The content creator remarks, “Yeah, I don’t agree with people using rage bait for political reasons.” She continues, “If they’re using it genuinely to educate and inform people, it’s fine. But if they’re using it to spread misinformation, I totally do not agree with that.” She concludes, “It’s not a joke anymore.”