"Rage bait, as you probably already know, is the publication, usually online, of material designed to make people angry. It's not a made-up phenomenon; we've known for some time that online engagement is most strongly driven by out-group animosity, but nor is it a cute feature of modern life, like iced matcha lattes and Labubus. It creates intellectual silos, drives deep social divisions,"
"I'd argue that it's a bit like making ethnic cleansing your word of 1992, during the Bosnian war. Yes, people were using it a lot, but that didn't make it a fun answer for a quiz. Turns out it was named Un-Word of the year by the GfdS (society for spoken German), which deplored its euphemistic nature. And that is fair."
Rage bait names online material crafted specifically to provoke anger and maximize engagement. Online engagement is driven strongly by out-group animosity, which encourages content that polarizes audiences. Rage bait fosters intellectual silos, deepens social divisions, and corrodes trust in institutions and reason by making people rely on tribal word of mouth. Some neologisms are extraneous or misleading, while others become normalized despite causing harm. Institutions that canonize contested words risk legitimizing damaging concepts. Mechanisms should exist to decommission words that have lost usefulness, changed meaning, or caused more harm than value.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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