RANTING ABOUT RAGEBAITERS 🎉
(Possibly again, I feel like I’ve talked about this before)
Okay so, to start, I know that the point of ragebaiting is to make people mad. I know that by posting about how ragebaiters piss me off, I’m proving that ragebaiting works. I also don’t mean ragebaiting in an “annoying my friends by saying why over and over again” way I mean the “I’m gonna say something horrible and disguise it as ragebait” people and things adjacent to that to be clear.
I have a few reasons why ragebaiters make me so mad, and the main one is that they’ll just say racist/ homophobic/ etc. shit and then when people say “hey that’s not okay to say” they’re just like “it was ragebait I totally just made you mad omg” which is not only annoying but I feel like it makes hateful statements seem less serious and kind of normalizes them being used for jokes, which is harmful.
Another reason is how much I’ve seen it harm neurodivergent people who are unable to tell that the person is ragebaiting. For example, I’ve seen a few cases on tiktok where someone will be saying something inaccurate or something like that to ragebait people, but then somebody who can’t tell that the person is just ragebaiting will respond correcting them or something, and then the ragebaiter will just clown on them for “falling for the ragebait” even though the person didn’t realize it was ragebait. This one bugs me just because it’s just mean to be honest.
Ragebaiting also bothers me because of how uncreative it is. This is the least harmful reason it bugs me honestly, but it’s still a reason. If you are going to troll people or whatever, at least be creative about it! Just saying horrible things or bullying people isn’t trolling, it’s just being a bad person.
I also don’t like that it gives people who are saying horrible things that they actually believe (assuming the other people are just doing it for attention and don’t actually believe those things) an out if they are held accountable for what they said. For example, someone could say something racist and actually believe what they’re saying, but then if someone responds telling them that that’s not right, they can just say they were ragebaiting and then make the person who was calling them out feel like a fool, even though they weren’t and they were in the right.
All in all, it’s just very harmful if it’s used in a situation that’s more than just bugging a friend or something and I don’t like that.