How is rage bait affecting our stories?
… and how are our stories affecting the regeneration of rage bait? Leave a comment to join this dialogue after reading today’s post, then scroll to the bottom to check out today’s writing prompt.
Ever since Oxford University Press named ‘rage bait’ as its 2025 word of the year, I’ve become more vigilant about noticing content that’s full of rage or meant to induce rage. But aside from the run-of-the-mill divisive political content out there, I’m not seeing anything all that ire-inducing anymore.
Maybe I’ve become desensitized to the rage bait and ignore it? Maybe it affects me less because the ecosystems on platforms I frequent, like Substack and BlueSky, haven’t become as tainted or ragey yet, at least when compared to the older Meta and X platforms?
Or maybe it’s because I consciously make an effort to only engage with content that makes me feel better in some way, or that adds value to my life and understanding of the world in some way, regardless of the platform I’m on— so content created mainly by supportive writing and reading communities and mission-oriented activists and organizations and creative people.
I also go directly to a handful of news sources for my news now instead of following news media outlets on social platforms, so I don’t see as many rage-baiting news stories and headlines in my social media feeds anymore. And even when I do, I don’t read or engage with news stories that don’t have something significant or important to add to the public discourse about a particular topic or issue. I know others are starting to do this too, or something similarly intentional, as far as their news media and social media consumption is concerned.
Announcing and taking social media breaks is becoming common practice now, likely due to dozens of studies and books written about the havoc its wreaking on individuals and society over the past couple of decades. Which has also allowed us to better understand and define terms like ‘rage bait’ and ‘doomscrolling’ and ‘trolling’, etc., helping us learn how to be aware of and mitigate their effects. Because once we have language for a thing, we can better understand and control a thing.
And it’s clear that, though they might seem like nothing more than silly catchphrases or colloquialisms at first, these new terms (like ‘rage bait’) have helped us, slowly but surely, get a better grasp of our emerging reality. Which is not to say that things like rage-baiting and trolling will disappear altogether, even if social media companies did more to squelch instead of fuel them, because ill-doers from all over the world will still, unfortunately, find ways to inflict harm on others as technology evolves and becomes more personalized yet less personal. But it is to say that once we name a thing and understand a thing, we’re in a better position to mitigate that thing’s harmful effects, right? As long as we don’t let the rage-baiting algorithms get even more out of hand, and whatever contributes to fueling them… like, what exactly?
I know there are various factors contributing to rage-baiting algorithms. But, as a voracious reader and writer, I can’t help but wonder in what ways all the ragey literature coming out might affect it, if at all.
Over the past few years, I’ve seen more and more novels about women and marginalized groups who turn into monsters to exact revenge on their predators and oppressors, especially when the law won’t help them or is being used as a tool to actively harm them. And I’ve enjoyed many of these novels. Yet, as I do, I can’t help but pause and reflect on how they’re affecting the rage-baiting algorithms, especially when AI scans them for training data and language. Or if all this ragey literature will perhaps end up (hopefully) challenging the rage-baiting algorithm instead of expanding its reach somehow.
I don’t want to fall into a chicken-egg type of argument here — Did the rage-baiting algorithm birth ragey literature, or vice versa?— especially when I full-heartedly believe such literature offers invaluable avenues for necessary human expression and presence (more on that another day). But in what ways are we human creatives and authors being unconsciously and subversively affected by these rage-baiting algorithms? In what ways have these rage-baiting algorithms already invaded our psyches, literature, lives, and art? And how will those invasions end up manifesting themselves in ways we don’t understand yet, or work to reinforce or reinvigorate the rage-baiting algorithms themselves? In what ways have the rage-baiting algorithms helped us unpack and share voices we’ve needed to hear and read about, and in what ways have they silenced them? As usual, I have so many questions.
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time from a multitude of angles. At the end of 2024 I wrote: Will 2025 be the year of the revenge trope? But back then (right after Luigi Mangione murdered that UnitedHealthcare CEO) I was anticipating an uptick in a different type of revenge story, or ragey story — the revenge story with protagonists working against those in power and those from the billionaire class and political elite.
Yet we still haven’t seen as many of those fictional revenge stories, those stories based in a deep-seated rage against those who hoard and wield their power to further marginalize and oppress those who are actually being portrayed as ragey monsters in contemporary literature now. At least, not to the extent I was anticipating. Or am I missing them all somehow? (Dang algorithms!)
I’m sure there are pros and cons to this realization. But it does make me wonder why we’re not seeing more ragey stories depicting the billionaire class as the monsters they are. Though I am pretty sure it has something to do with these rage-baiting algorithms, and who owns them… right?
Besides, ragey women and minorities are easier for those in power to dismiss as completely unhinged and too ragey to be worth paying attention to anyway (outside their entertainment value), as they already have been for centuries. Yet those enraged at the oligarchs and rage-baiting algorithm owners running humanity into the ground, who want to depict the real monsters as monsters in their stories … now that just might be a different story to consider and tell…
What are your thoughts on this topic? Leave a comment to join this dialogue, and don’t forget to share this post with others so they can join this dialogue too.
© This work is not available for artificial intelligence (AI) training. All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC.
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Today’s Writing Prompt
Writing Prompt: Rage
Write a piece of flash fiction that depicts someone who is enraged, or who is becoming enraged. Or write about the last time you felt rage.
Writing Tip
Try to include all five senses (sight, touch, sound, taste, and smell) in what you write today.
