Do you ever scroll on TikTok and run into a video that makes you go “what the…”? Well, that happens to me quite often, especially with the rise of rage bait. Rage bait is clickbait disguised into an emotionally reactive statement. What clickbait and ragebait have in common is they’re both used to lure people in by using language that gets a reaction out of them.
I noticed this trend of rage bait with certain videos Jubilee makes. Jubilee is a YouTube channel with over 8.5 million followers. Their content focuses on videos that range in a multitude of categories. A couple of these categories caught my attention when I started to see them flood my TikTok feed. These videos were their “surrounded,” “middle ground” and “spectrum” categories. The surrounded and middle ground videos usually have people from two different stances on issues or experiences who debate and converse. The spectrum videos usually have a group of people from the same identity group, and they read about five statements and then decide whether they agree or disagree with them.
When it comes to rage bait, the topics aren’t always political. Yet, I’ve noticed rage bait rises in popularity during election time. What I mean by this is every 4 years around November, political content gets pushed out heavily. Whether it’s a moderated debate or a reaction video, politics are heavily discussed. With these discussions, we see more debates with opposing sides coming together, and sometimes things are being said that make you rewind the video.
You can see these types of rage bait political videos on Jubilee with their surrounding series. Jubilee has three surrounding videos uploaded, two of which are political. The two videos are titled “Can 25 Liberal College Students Outsmart 1 Conservative (feat. Charlie Kirk)” and “Can 1 Woke Teen Survive 20 Trump Supporters.” In these videos, they usually debate which presidential candidate is more fit and popular issues being discussed when deciding who to vote for. What I’ve seen in these videos is it seems the person who is representing themselves and their own ideas have done their proper research and are ready to debate these topics. However, the majority arguing on the opposing side argue what they currently know and understand about the topics. It is one person who has done the research against 20+ people who haven’t.
Rage bait is everywhere online. An online forum where rage bait runs wild is X (formerly known as Twitter). After Elon Musk gained ownership of X, the app changed completely. With the loss of moderators and the praise of free speech, anything and everything is posted onto X without being checked. This causes not only misinformation, but uneducated beliefs to become widespread.
Rage bait all in all is a way people make money. Rage baiters create content that elicits reactions to get engagement. Whether it’s a video on a hot take about Trump or naming a crime that’s been committed, rage bait only exists for profit. What makes rage bait so dangerous is that people will take what they see online, without researching it, and spread misinformation. We saw this with the presidential debate, when Trump ran with a misinformed belief that Haitian immigrants are eating domestic animals. The next time you run into a post that upsets you, don’t engage and just scroll.
