How rage baiting in marketing rewired emotion into an economic model

Apocalyptic pollution levels, the climate crisis, wars, inflation—we live in times defined by a sense of frustration that culminates in anger. Or, according to the term coined in 2009, “rage baiting”. Rage baiting in marketing entails manipulating users into engaging with inflammatory content by provoking them. For instance, a contestant in a reality show who cusses incessantly but catches eyeballs. It is a tactic that has gone beyond just pushing TRPs to increasing views, likes, shares, and retweets on social media.

Rage baiting has the power to reverse logical thinking among people. “Rage makes a person react before they can think. When people fall for a rage bait, they comment, repost, or share the content with friends, making it spread even more, hence increasing engagement. People’s reaction to anything matters more than the truth. And by getting a platform to vent, people also feel heard, gaining a sense of importance,” explains Akanksha Das, consultant clinical psychologist, Fortis Hospital, Mulund, Mumbai.

“Rage baiting in marketing thrives among younger, hyper-online audiences who actively engage with cultural or social issues. It works best on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and on Instagram Reels, where comment culture drives amplification. Topics like gender, politics, class, and pop culture often perform well. Online commentators, influencers, and meme pages amplify these narratives further, often unintentionally turning controversies into trends,” observes Yasin Hamidani, director, Media Care Brand Solutions in Mumbai.

“In India, rage baiting started gaining traction around 2018–19,” observes Hamidani. That’s when social media algorithms began amplifying high-engagement, emotion-driven content, leading to an explosion of short-form videos.

Rage baiting in marketing works because of the attention economy

“Rage bait often blows up around sensitive topics because these trigger strong emotional responses on platforms designed for quick reactions, where scrolling is endless. The more outrage a post generates, the more valuable it becomes, not because it’s meaningful, but because it’s loud. Rage baiting in marketing turns anger into a kind of currency in the attention economy,” says Monica Malik, founder, Madly Famous, a content marketing agency that helps brands capture the audience’s attention. This currency translates into visibility that brings with it brand deals and opportunities that can be used to reach new consumers.

“People want attention and will do anything for it; they know that if they have someone’s attention, others will at least listen to them,” says 28-year-old Parikshat Kashyap, a Delhi-based rapper and businessperson who previously worked in marketing.

That everyone today has an opinion to share on social media—including rants—is further fuelling rage baiting. “Real confrontations don’t exist anymore. One can just tweet and if enough people retweet it, it becomes something that needs to be addressed,” adds Kashyap. 

Rage baiting also gains traction because of people’s compartmentalised lives. “Anger is the easiest tool to get people out of that mindspace and sustain their attention. With sorrow, you can disassociate after a while or spiral, and happiness is short-lived. Rage baiting in marketing is the commodification and regulation of anger, which had earlier been used societally to make people act in a way desirable by the hegemonies,” explains sociologist Shambhobhi Bagchi. “People are trolling a 10-year-old who came across as impatient with Amitabh Bachchan in a recent episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati. That’s rage baiting by showing a kid ‘disrespecting’ a superstar as well as an older person,” she adds. 

Today, having a contrarian opinion is one way of staying in people’s memories. The easiest way to be memorable and stand out  is to say something negative. Negativity often cuts through the noise faster than nuance, thereby guaranteeing greater engagement. Advertisements in India have tried it as a marketing tactic. For example, in 2024, Eternal’s (Zomato, Blinkit, District, Hyperpure, Feeding India),CEO Deepinder Goyal posted a job description for a "Chief of Staff," stating the candidate would have to pay ₹20 lakh to be employed. He later clarified that it was  meant as a creativity  test,  but the backlash the post triggered worked exactly as intended: generating a buzz around the brand.

“The nature of the world we are living in is such that unless you’re contrarian, you’re considered vanilla, and that isn’t memorable. There’s a whole set of people who are just contrarians—men shouting at women or those talking about gender or talking about people’s rights,” says Nikhil Taneja, co-founder, We Are Yuvaa and creator-host of the podcast, Be A Man, Yaar!. Or, it could just be as simple as disagreeing with a popular or traditional opinion. Taneja admits his podcastrose to popularity via a viral clip from an episode featuring Naseeruddin Shah in season 1 (2023), where the actor is talking about how he thinks the film RRR is very hyper-masculine. “Ten million people watched that Reel,” he says. 

Algorithms and online content pushes rage baiting

Algorithms also further propel rage baiting by maximising engagement that stems from contrarian opinion. “Experts have realised this—and instead of letting algorithms play them, they are using it to change opinions via contrarian content. The aim of rage baiting in marketing is to get people reacting in a way beneficial to the brand. In the process, rage baiting is also incentivising the loudest and most obnoxious voices out there,” says Taneja. 

The algorithm is also responsible for showing people similar content, thus building their rage. A February 2024 article pointed out that “as a highly arousing emotion, users are more likely to engage with content that elicits outrage and produce content that provokes outrage in others. For example, each moral-emotional word in a politics-related tweet increases the chances of a retweet by 20%.”

Moreover, people get paid for retweets if the engagement is high enough. “Today, a video of a woman dancing, shot without her consent and uploaded on X, will get comments about how it’s ‘against our culture,’ which will drive up engagement. While there are issues to be angry about today—poverty, starvation, wars, gender-based violence, poor air quality, bad roads—people aren’t choosing to be angry about them. It’s usually irrelevant, made-up sh*t to distract them and keep them angry, just to make money,” says Taneja. 

And what’s a better distraction than app-based mobile games? According to a December 2024 paper by Pune’s FLAME University, ads on social media platforms such as Instagram have begun featuring purposefully bad gameplay as a form of rage baiting. This includes games like Helix Jump, Aqua Park, Logicus, and Screw Jam Puzzle. “The aim is to 'provoke' individuals with sub-par gameplay which is presented as a challenge to do better. Making avoidable errors and ignoring obvious solutions compel the audience to do it themselves, harnessing anger as a motivator to act impulsively. Rage baiting capitalises on this human tendency,” states the paper, explaining  the financial viability of the marketing tool. 

Outrage works and can translate to earnings. In a LinkedIn post, Akhil Suresh Nair, founder and CEO, Xena Intelligence, shares examples. His post went on to state how ads from American Eagle featuring Sydney Sweeney were called suggestive or even offensive, but Amazon searches for the brand spiked 280 per cent, and their stock jumped 24 per cent. Similarly, Oatly’s “Milk is for Babies” campaign infuriated farmers and dairy drinkers, but the backlash gave them massive visibility. 

Why rage baiting in marketing is manipulative

Rage baiting is manipulative, with the smartest people doing it so calmly that it almost feels like gaslighting. It makes people argue with their own selves till they get flummoxed enough to buy or believe whatever is being told to them.

“A lot of content today is created purely to provoke rather than to make a point or add any real value. The intent isn’t to start a dialogue, it’s simply to stir emotions,” explains Malik. According to her, such manipulation is two-fold because oftentimes, the marketing campaign itself doesn’t come from a place of anger. There are brands and individuals who don’t believe in the things they project to be angry about. “Certain creators and channels are raging about everything—but how can one person be angry about everything? It’s what happens when someone doesn’t have a point of view,” says Taneja. It’s also impacting the tone of content.

The commodification of rage can tug at one’s moral compass. “If the rage is getting people votes or getting people to buy stuff, it’s considered morally okay. If it starts destruction, even brands won’t be okay with it. Brands only want people to be angry to an extent so that they give into a certain propaganda. Anger is an unpredictable emotion, and rage baiting’s short-sightedness at the repercussions could be problematic,” explains Bagchi.

Smart marketers are those who know when to empathise and when to disengage from outrage cycles. While it drives visibility for brands, engagement built on negativity isn’t the same as building real trust. “Rage baiting can get quick views and short-term revenue, but it comes at the cost of long-term credibility. You might win the algorithm for a week, but you definitely lose the audience’s trust in the process,” says Malik. 

The perils of using rage baiting in marketing

Overexposure to outrage also desensitises audiences, making genuine conversations harder. When emotions are used as marketing tools, empathy takes a back seat. “For creators and brands, it attracts trolling, misinformation, and brand safety risks that outweigh the temporary boost in engagement,” points out Hamidani.

Karan Pherwani, Vice President, Chatterbox Technologies, says, “Brands who want to stay away from the negativity then work with creators who rage bait because those creators usually have greater reach online, and users discover the brand through them,” he says. 

Indian brands and influencers have often toed the line: In 2024, celebrity Poonam Pandey faked her death from cervical cancer to apparently spread awareness about it, but was severely called out for it. “In 2008, a Haywards 5000 advertisement featured Sanjay Dutt yelling at male viewers to not get their nails done and be a real man by drinking Haywards instead. The ad resurfaced in 2021 and was called out,” recalls Kashyap.

Rage baiting—for better or for worse?

While rage baiting in marketing has often proved to be a successful strategy, it also has societal repercussions: “Over time, a constant exposure to outrage can increase stress, anger, and fatigue, leading to emotional burnout and anxiety. People will be stuck on their opinions, believing half-baked information or misinformation, which could cause group polarisation—the tendency for a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclinations of its individual members,” says Das. Owing to the unpredictable nature of anger, the impact could be as unpredictable. “Instead of encouraging a healthy discussion, it could provoke a defensive reaction. Real change happens when people listen, and rage baiting rarely achieves that,” she adds.

The paradox of digital culture and marketing lies in how it capitalises on connection while exacerbating polarisation. But not all is lost. “If the rage is about inequalities that exist around us, to get people to take action or accountability, or to get them to vote or speak up when necessary, it could do some good—and that would be revolutionary. But rage only works when it’s against an institution or those in power,” shares Taneja.

According to Hamidani, when the line between activism and algorithmic rage blurs, the purpose gets diluted. “Anger can raise awareness, but sustained change needs dialogue, not division. The key lies in balance: using emotion to highlight issues, not sensationalise them,” she says. Until that balance is attained, rage baiting could just teach people how to process their anger, pick their battles, and learn when to let go.