Why We’re So Polarized (II)
Friends,
The publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary has named “rage bait” its phrase of the year.
Call it the monetization of rage. Rage has become a valuable commodity. (Always follow the money.)
A growing number of online creators are making rage bait. Their goal is to record videos, produce memes, and write posts that make other users furious: conspiracy theories, lies, combustible AI-generated video clips — whatever it takes.
The more content they create, the more engagement they get, the more they get paid.
The rage bait market is worldwide. Since X, Facebook, and Instagram pay certain content creators for posts that drive engagement, people all over the globe have a financial incentive to share material that feeds the anger of American users and will therefore get reposted.
Last week a new feature on X permitting users to see where accounts originate showed that a number of high-engagement MAGA accounts that claim to be those of patriotic Americans are in fact from Russia, Eastern Europe, India, Nigeria, Thailand, and Bangladesh.
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