As Oxford Dictionary coins it the Word of the Year, the Internet is divided. Is it making being online a worse experience or is it just innocent fun?
Saniya Mirwani believes there is a fun way to rage bait whereas Saumya Sahni is tired of it. PIC/NIMESH DAVE
Have you ever pinched your friend because it might piss them off? And then laughed when they did. Or have you ever turned the light off in the bathroom when your sibling was using it? Well guess what! You’ve been rage baiting everyone around you. It’s the act of doing or saying something intentionally that might piss someone off, just for the joy of it.
But as Oxford Dictionary names “rage bait” the Word of the Year, the phenomenon takes on a sharper, more strategic form online. What begins as stealing your sibling’s chocolates becomes, in the attention economy, a calculated attempt to hook an increasingly desensitised audience. Creators provoke on purpose now — tossing out controversial statements purely to stir outrage. Timelines swell with clips like “Here’s why women belong in the kitchen”, with Andrew Tates and Jubilees abroad, and closer home the Uorfi Javeds, Puneet Superstars, and Orrys — divisive, yes, but impossible to ignore.
When virality converts directly into money, anger becomes a business model. But how much outrage can the Internet sustain? Does rage bait actually work long-term? And is there such a thing as doing it responsibly?
Padmakshi Sharma believes that rage bait may create short-term visibility but over time, it will erode anyone’s reputation
Saniya Mirwani, a 27-year-old comic with over a lakh followers, jokingly describes herself as an “asshole” in her bio. She insists rage bait isn’t always malicious. Often, it’s just a bit. “I intentionally misspell words because I know some grammar nazi will correct me,” she says. “Everyone knows I’m engaged, but whenever I post about my fiance, I call him my boyfriend. For some reason, that really upsets people.” For her, intent is everything. The Internet is constantly primed for outrage, and sometimes you can leverage that simply to have fun.
Earlier this year, Mirwani appeared on the Having Said That Show, where she offered a deliberately provocative take about vegans “needing help” and joked that she doesn’t believe allergies exist. “It was a comedic podcast. I was asked for a hot take, so I gave one,” she explains. “I’m not a politician or a godman. It’s obvious I believe allergies exist. I’m engaged to a pure vegetarian. Clearly I don’t hate vegans. It was a bit. People struggle to separate reality from performance on the Internet.”
Mirwani says her online persona is just that — a persona — and discerning viewers should recognise the difference. Yet the backlash she received was far from playful. “I got long hate messages, hate videos, even threats of rape and murder,” she recalls. “It shows how little we understand comedy, and the unfair expectations we place on comics.”
But she draws a line when intent turns dark. “If a male creator posts an obnoxious, conservative take on sexual assault just for views — something he doesn’t even believe — that’s unnecessary. That goes against the very fabric of humanity.”
We’re living in an age where even unpopular opinions have an audience. Earlier, if you said something awful or truly rage baity, you weren’t rewarded for that behaviour at least. But now you get money for it. “The worse you are, the more money they pay you to be that person,” says 28-year-old Saumya Sahni who boasts over a lakh and a half followers on Instagram, where she creates comedy skits. “The ruder you are, the more attention you get, the more successful you are in the metrics of Instagram or whatever platform. But you do miss out on important conversations.”
But what drives one to rage bait in the first place? “I think people want to be famous for anything. They don’t care what they’re famous for. There’s a little bit of an anti-social personality in ignoreing what people have to say about you. They just don’t care about their footprint or the consequences of their actions. They have low empathy levels. It’s a very Kardashian school of fame,” she says.
“Sometimes, when you hear a rage bait argument on the Internet, it affirms an opinion you have that you could never say out loud,” she says, “And so you feel seen. It gives you the ability to say it out loud yourself.” Perhaps this is why, until just a few years ago, it was not so common to hear disturbingly marginalising takes. For example, incels have always existed but till a few years ago they were still a hidden side of the Internet and not the dominant narrative, like they are today. “They [rage baiters] are selling something they don’t have themselves. And audiences get affected by this. They believe it to be the gospel truth. And they fight with their families over it, they run away from their homes.” Sahni also dives deeper into other forms of media like her podcast, Shut Up We Are Talking. She is also experimenting with creative writing to be able to deliver a deeper message.
In the last year or so, another crop of creators have emerged on the Internet — the intellectuals. These creators make content around academic subjects, breaking them down for their audiences. One who has blown up in the last few months is Padmakshi Sharma, who has reached 77,000 people in just 74 posts. She theorises, “Provocation produces short-term visibility. But over time, it will erode anyone’s reputation. The audience isn’t stupid. You may fall for rage bait once, or twice, or even thrice, but you are bound to catch up.”
On the other end, there is an audience without rage bait as well. “There are creators who are focused on creating communities and educational content. People trust them. Especially creators who are also professionals like CAs, doctors, or lawyers. You will see that such creators rarely ever participate in rage bait. It’s because their audiences are based on trust.”
“My work is engaged around cognitive engagement. The whole point of my page is to introduce nuance to my viewers, to make online spaces less polarised. It’s very important to me that people take me seriously and rage baiting would be completely at odds with that goal.”
But what does rage baiting even do to audiences? “I think it degrades our ability to think and to actively listen. This is very dangerous because these are foundational for the sustenance of any civilised society. More speech — when the function of that speech is not to exchange ideas, but to signal some sort of allegiance to your own social tribe and hostility towards another tribe — is not the answer,” she says, “It forces us into these echo chambers. And ultimately, it results in us becoming a crowd or a mob instead of a public. And the difference between the two, as Gabriel Tarde says, is that public is reflective, public thinks deeply, and public is necessary for a democracy. But crowds are reactive, they’re driven by emotions.”
But Sharma still thinks rage bait isn’t all bad. She calls back to Mirwani’s case of misspelling words just to garner engagement. “The best one is when creators misspell ‘you’re’ as ‘your’,” she laughs. She calls this “low-stakes rage bait” where intentions remain innocent. “I think people love correcting others. And these kinds of rage baits don’t cause any harm. So it’s a win-win for everyone involved.”
‘Rage and bait, both are inherently bad words’
Rahul daCunha, ad man
When the Internet first came around, it was an escape from real life. But now all the rage bait makes it seem like we have to go offline to escape. How did we get here? Ad man Rahul daCunha tells us, “Somewhere modern man has lost his objectivity. Somewhere along the line, we’ve become followers rather than leaders. So everything is being controlled to follow the herd. So if rage baiting is a thing, everyone is rage baiting.
Unfortunately, we’ve lost discussion and debate. So I think where we went wrong is: we thought we could create debate, and instead we ended up causing dissent. You hear people responding, and when you know that everything is so microscopically analysed today. If a guy makes a face, he’s going to get criticised for it. Somebody says something and it’s switched around. And trolls — paid trolls — just get onto the guy. When did we become so toxic and negative?” “I hope this word only stays for one year. I prefer the other word, ‘aura-farming’. At least it’s aura. At least it’s farming. Two good words. Rage bait — both words are just inherently bad words. Bad words, man,” he sighs.
Here’s what Gen Z is doing to escape rage bait
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“I’ve been visiting new topics I have not explored before like philosophy. I’m reading research papers just for fun. Although it’s really cliche, getting back into this active reading has decreased my screen time a lot.”
A 19-year-old Gen Z, Saesha Deviprasad gives us actionable steps to escape rage bait:
Leave short-form behind
“I’ve been watching a lot of podcasts with economic and political thinkers, just to escape that short-form media. If you can’t read, go to YouTube and there are many deep-divers who will give you insightful thoughts.”
Substack
“Start writing. Anything, but just write down your thoughts. I’ve been writing a little bit on Substack here and there about topics of interest. I find it really enjoyable. It sharpens my research skills.”
Pick up a hobby
“I’ve been getting back into digital art. That’s something I was doing a lot before but lost track in the middle. Now I’ve gotten inspired — honestly by online creators themselves — to get back on track with it. So ironically, Instagram has also inspired me to get back into the hobbies I once used to do every single day.”
Collect physical media
“I collect records. So sometimes when I don’t feel like using Spotify, I just put on a vinyl record. I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s something more rewarding about listening to it physically than streaming it. Because you know you own the music, and you’re not paying for it every time you stream it. So that’s something I’ve been doing.”
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