Talk:Rage-baiting

Created page from sandbox

This page was created from the user's sandbox The full history of its development can be found there. I had also considered creating the page "rage click" instead of rage farm. Oceanflynn (talk) 22:45, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Shorter lead needed

The WP:LEAD is much too long in proportion to the overall length of the article. Sometimes big articles like History of France where most of the content is generally well-organised and not too controversial can justify long leads, but that is not the case here. Redoing the lead will first require a thorough reading through the whole content, which mostly looks well-sourced. My suggestion for someone with the time to do this:

• shift most of paragraphs 2, 3, 4 of the current lead to the body of the article, possibly as brief, complementary sections or subsections;
• consider re-organising some of the existing section/subsection structure ("Examples" sounds a bit anecdotic);
• then re-check the lead to see if it's a fair summary, roughly matching the sections and summarising them.

Boud (talk) 01:45, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Better citations

Citations on the article are all over the place. Tried cleaning them up but I'm not entirely sure about what is entirely necessary to keep on the page. Aisterion (talk) 11:35, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Biased article

This article makes it seem as though only right wing news outlets participate in rage bait when in reality it's done all across the political spectrum. Just another example of left wing bias on Wikipedia. 2605:A601:AC39:1200:7DCB:CBC0:BA2E:6E36 (talk) 16:57, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

of course wikipedia cant get political in 1 second 38.25.30.113 (talk) 22:23, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: ENGL 1301

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 9 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): LC1061 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by LC1061 (talk) 17:45, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Facebook's enragement engagement policy

It should be mentioned that Facebook employees came forward claiming Facebook had a stated policy that intentionally promoted enraging posts, and locked out tens of millions of users who thwarted the policy with convincing, reasoned, well supported, well written, replies. The employees called it the enragement engagement policy because it exploited Facebook's own findings that enraging users retained them on the site longer. One in a hundred users of this kind were locked out under false accusations of policy violations including false accusations of violating Facebook's real name requirement. A requirement Facebook already lost a lawsuit for enforcing on abused women, and transgendered people using a preferred name. There has yet to be a suit filed against Facebook for banning people who were using real names but falsely accused of not. But Facebook's policy on it is a direct violation of the FCC founding law, The Communication Act of 1934. Specifically the section on non discrimination in like fees or requirements for like services. Facebook has been demanding proof of identity from falsely accused people but not from all users. Demanding falsely accused users provide a phone number, and denying service altogether to everyone else in households that use one phone. 2600:8807:5400:600:6DB6:FAB9:F760:45EC (talk) 11:08, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Trolling?

As far as I’m aware, the word “trolling” has a much longer history and more sources referring to it than the relatively novel “ragebait,” should this article be merged with Troll (slang)? 47.149.93.141 (talk) 18:04, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

I understand the two to be different in the goals and context in which they happen. Trolling is done for entertainment, fun or a form of satisfaction, and historically happens in forums, mailing lists, etc. where the reply has not a lot of changes of being seen outside of that context. The goal is more to be amused at someone answering seriously something that was never meant earnestly.

On the other hand, rage-baiting has the explicit goal of maximising engagement on platforms where there is a commercial benefit to keeping people on the platform. The context is an environment where the original rage-bait message and the replies both have the possibility of going viral and being seen by many people (tens, hundreds of thousand if not millions). The goal is cynical, the rage-bait message may not be earnest by has goals other than amusement and wasting people's time: "culture wars", propaganda, ad-revenue farming, scams, etc.

If anything, i'd suggest rage-baiting is the weaponisation of trolling. I am axx (talk) 00:42, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Add the image of the monkey and tiger

this one 151.69.0.229 (talk) 10:40, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

vro has a point ~2025-34982-34 (talk) 20:41, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the significance of this image is to the article; please provide a source that discusses the image.

In addition, it's likely to violate copyright law, if the image is under copyright. ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 05:18, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

The image is widely used throughout social media platforms (TikTok, Instagram, etc.) to portray the act of "ragebaiting" an individual. Due to the original image being an edit of multiple existing images, it falls under free use. An original creator has not been identified nor have they copyrighted the image itself, which has been used by hundreds of other people and sources without legal difficulties.

Here is an article from Yahoo Entertainment describing the image's origin and how it correlates to ragebaiting online ~2026-23301-44 (talk) 16:10, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

That source (which seems to be taken from https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lion-screaming-at-monkey) identifies the meme as being an edit of two different stock photographs, so we should assume it to be copyrighted.

If we wanted to include it under fair use we'd have to meet all the conditions of WP:NFCCP. I'm not sure that its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the article topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding, when the article doesn't currently have any text about the meme and WP:KNOWYOURMEME can't be used directly as a source. Belbury (talk) 16:17, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Note that "Another website used the image and didn't get into trouble" does not imply that the image is not copyrighted. Also, even if an owner doesn't enforce their copyright (meaning that other people could use it "without legal difficulties," as you say), that doesn't mean it isn't copyrighted. ~ rusty ^meow ~ 20:38, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Benign "ragebait"

Is there not a sense in which "ragebait" is used to describe harmless trolling / second-hand embarassment? E.g., Good Griefs. The article seems very focused on its extreme forms. LaborHorizontal (talk) 19:38, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 January 2026

Please change "... eliciting outrage with the goal of increasing internet traffic ..." to "... eliciting outrage, usually with the goal of increasing internet traffic ..." since it is becoming increasingly common to be used purely to annoy people. Digitalisdizzy (talk) 20:07, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before creating an edit request. You should also provide sources, since I believe this is about a different thing. --pro-anti-air ––>(talk)<–– 21:26, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Social media platforms "inadvertently encouraging such behavior"

Why does the introduction say:

"social media algorithms reward both positive and negative engagement, inadvertently encouraging such behavior"

There is intentionality, it's not an error on the part of social networks where rage-baiting prospers. Even the source which is suppose to support this (ironically, a Twitter post that has now disappeared with the collapse of Twitter into X) has for title "You are being rage farmed. Your angry quote tweet = the goal."

The line should be replaced with:

"social media algorithms reward both positive and negative engagement, intentionally encouraging such behavior' I am axx (talk) 00:49, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 January 2026

I think there was a mistake in citation of one of the terms "Echo chambers", which cited Eco chamber as in a room where there are thin metal objects that create echo. In the context of the text, I think the term should be cited as to refer to the echo chamber in media, where one does not encounter information that does not oppose one's opinion John344413 (talk) 18:09, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

 Done, link changed to Echo chamber (media). Thanks! --Belbury (talk) 18:13, 25 January 2026 (UTC)