What is rage-baiting and why is it profitable?

“I get a lot of hate”. The phrases of content material creator Winta Zesu, who final yr made $150,000 (£117,000) from posting on social media.

What separates Winta from different influencers? The folks commenting on her posts and driving visitors to her movies are sometimes doing so out of anger.

“Every single video of mine that has gained millions of views is because of hate comments,” the 24-year-old explains.

In these movies, she paperwork the lifetime of a New York City mannequin, whose largest downside is being too fairly. What some within the feedback don’t realise, is that Winta is taking part in a personality.

“I get a lot of nasty comments, people say ‘you’re not the prettiest girl’ or ‘please bring yourself down, you have too much confidence’,” she says to the BBC from her New York City house.

Winta is a part of a rising group of on-line creators making ‘rage bait’ content material, the place the objective is straightforward: report movies, produce memes and write posts that make different customers viscerally offended, then bask within the 1000’s, and even thousands and thousands, of shares and likes.

It differs from its internet-cousin clickbait, the place a headline is used to tempt a reader to click on by way of to view a video or article.

As advertising podcaster Andrea Jones notes: “A hook reflects what’s in that piece of content and comes from a place of trust, whereas rage-baiting content is designed to be manipulative.”

But the grip destructive content material has on human psychology is one thing that’s hardwired into us, in response to Dr William Brady, who research how the mind interacts with new applied sciences.

“In our past, this is the kind of content that we really needed to pay attention to,” he explains, “so we have these biases built into our learning and our attention.”

The progress in rage baiting content material has coincided with the key social media platforms paying creators extra for his or her content material.

These creator packages – which reward customers for likes, feedback and shares, and permit them to submit sponsored content material – have been linked to its rise.

“If we see a cat, we’re like ‘oh, that’s cute’ and scroll on. But if we see someone doing something obscene, we may type in the comments ‘this is terrible’, and that sort of comment is seen as a higher quality engagement by the algorithm,” explains advertising podcaster Andréa Jones.

“The more content a user creates the more engagement they get, the more that they get paid.

“And so, some creators will do something to get extra views, even whether it is destructive or inciting rage and anger in folks,” she says with a notice of concern. “It leads to disengagement.”

Rage bait content material is available in many varieties, from outrageous meals recipes, to assaults in your favorite popstar. But in a yr of worldwide elections, notably within the US, rage baiting has unfold to politics too.

As Dr Brady observes: “There has been a spike in the build up to elections, because it’s an effective way to mobilize your political group to potentially vote and take action.”

He notes the American election was light on policy, and instead centred around outrage, adding, “it was hyper-focused on ‘Trump is horrible for this reason’ or ‘Harris is horrible for that reason’.”

An investigation from BBC social media investigations correspondent Marianna Spring found some users on X have been being paid “1000’s of {dollars}” by the social media site, for sharing content including misinformation, AI-generated images and unfounded conspiracy theories.

Some who study the trends are concerned that too much negative content can lead to the average person “switching off”.

“It can be draining to have such high emotions all the time,” says Ariel Hazel, assistant professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan.

“It turns them off the news environment and we’re seeing increased amounts of active news avoidance around the world.”

Others worry about normalising anger offline and the eroding effects on people’s trust in the content they view.

“Algorithms amplify outrage, it makes people think it’s more normal,” says social psychologist Dr William Brady.

He adds: “What we know from certain platforms like X is that politically extreme content is actually produced by a very small fraction of the user base, but algorithms can amplify it as if they were more of a majority.”

The BBC contacted the main social media platforms about rage bait on their sites, but had no responses.

In October 2024, Meta govt Adam Mosseri posted on Threads about “an increase in engagement-bait” on the platform, adding, “we’re working to get it under control.”

While Elon Musk’s rival platform X, recently announced a change to its Creator Revenue Sharing Program which can see creators compensated primarily based on engagement from the positioning’s premium customers – similar to likes, replies, and reposts. Previously compensation was primarily based on advertisements considered by premium customers.

TikTok and YouTube enable customers to earn money from their posts or to share sponsored content material too, however have guidelines which permit them to de-monetise or droop profiles that submit misinformation. X doesn’t have pointers on misinformation in the identical manner.

Back in Winta Zesu’s New York City house, the dialog – which is going down days earlier than the US election – turns to politics.

“Yeah, I don’t agree with people using rage bait for political reasons,” the content material creator says.

“If they’re using it genuinely to educate and inform people, it’s fine. But if they’re using it to spread misinformation, I totally do not agree with that.

“It’s not a joke anymore.”