Ragebait

That headline that just made your blood boil? It was designed to do exactly that. And it worked.

Ragebait is content crafted to provoke an emotional reaction — outrage, disgust, indignation — rather than inform you. It exists because anger is the most reliable driver of engagement. You share what makes you furious. You comment on what offends you. You click on what threatens your worldview. Every platform that profits from your attention has learned this, and the content that reaches you has been filtered through that logic.

The problem isn't that you get angry. Some things deserve anger. The problem is that a system optimised for engagement will feed you the most enraging version of everything, regardless of accuracy or importance. A misleading headline that makes you livid performs better than a nuanced article that makes you think. So the misleading headline wins. Every time.

This reshapes your picture of reality. When your information diet is sorted by outrage potential, you end up believing the world is more extreme, more hostile, and more divided than it actually is. Your political opponents seem crazier. Every issue feels urgent. Compromise looks like betrayal.

Before you share something that made you furious, pause. Ask whether it was written to inform you or to use you.

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References

• Finkel et al. — Political Sectarianism in America (2020)
• Neil Postman — Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)