Every blue tick wanker on Twitter and Facebook has suddenly become a rage bait merchant.
And trust me. You’ve seen them.
The verified accounts posting the dumbest, most inflammatory takes imaginable just to farm engagement.
It’s especially popular on Twitter because engagement of any sort = I can get monetised for my stupidity…
Although on Facebook. If you scroll for a few minutes you’ll see;
The “entrepreneurs” saying women shouldn’t vote.
The “marketers” claiming anyone who eats vegetables is a pussy.
The “thought leaders” posting deliberately wrong information just to get people arguing in the comments and I remember towards the back end of 2025 this shit was all over LinkedIn.
These clowns have figured out that the algorithm rewards outrage.
Say something stupid enough, offensive enough, or wrong enough, and people can’t help themselves.
It’s like they have to respond. They have to correct you. They have to tell you how dumb you are.
It’s worse than Cunningham’s law.
The wild thing is that every comment, every quote tweet, every angry response feeds the machine and pushes that post to more people.
So now everyone’s doing it.
Every mediocre marketer with a blue checkmark has abandoned actual strategy in favour of “say inflammatory bullshit and watch the engagement roll in.”
And you know what? It works. For about five minutes.
Then people catch on. They realise you’re not interesting. You’re just annoying.
They realise you don’t actually believe half the shit you’re saying. They realise you’re the digital equivalent of a toddler throwing a tantrum for attention.
(ever see a little kid in the shops drop its ass to the floor and flap about because you wouldn’t get it a new set of lego?”
That’s you when you do it.
They tune you out. Or worse, they start associating your brand with being a disingenuous rage farming dickhead.
And here I go again on my ol’ soap box, cause these blue tick wankers don’t understand…
Attention isn’t the same as influence. Engagement isn’t the same as trust. Getting people mad at you isn’t the same as getting them to buy from you.
You know what actually works? What’s worked for decades and will keep working long after the rage bait trend dies?
The fundamentals that Drew Eric Whitman lays out in Ca$hvertising.
Not algorithmic gaming bullshit. Not engagement hacking. Not pissing people off for clicks.
Real marketing stuff.
The sauce.
The kind based on actual human psychology instead of platform manipulation.
Whitman talks about Life Force 8, which is the core human desires that drive every purchasing decision…
Survival. Enjoyment of food and beverages. Freedom from fear and pain. Sexual companionship. Comfortable living conditions. Superiority. Care and protection of loved ones. Social approval.
Notice what’s not on that list?
Getting into pointless arguments with strangers on the internet.
People don’t buy because you made them angry. (I mean rage buying could be a thing)
They buy because you tapped into something they actually want. Something they need. Something that makes their life better, easier, safer, or more enjoyable.
Rage bait might get you attention, but it doesn’t build desire. It doesn’t create trust. It doesn’t make people think “I want to give this person my money.”
It just makes people think you’re an asshole.
The blue tick strategy is a race to the bottom.
Everyone’s competing to say the most outrageous thing. To be the most controversial. To generate the most angry responses. And the end result is a feed full of performative bullshit that nobody actually cares about beyond their initial rage fuelled response.
Meanwhile, the marketers who understand actual psychology are the ones who know how to tap into real human desires and fears and aspirations and are quietly building businesses that last.
They’re successful for being effective.
They’re using the principles Whitman teaches by understanding what people actually want, speaking to those desires in compelling ways, and making offers that feel like no brainers.
That’s what will reign supreme.
And it’s not trendy. It doesn’t game the algorithm. But because it’s based on how humans actually think and make decisions, which hasn’t changed in thousands of years and won’t change no matter what Elon does to Twitter next week.
You can try and build a business on rage bait if you want. You can become the person everyone loves to hate. You can generate endless engagement from people who would never buy from you in a million years.
Or you can learn actual marketing. The kind that persuades instead of provokes. The kind that builds loyalty instead of animosity. The kind that makes you money instead of just making you infamous.
One of those strategies has staying power. The other one burns out the second the algorithm changes or people get tired of your fuckery.
I’d probably say choose wisely but I can guarantee some people are going to go down that route cause some dumbass on LinkedIn or Facebook has created the Rage Bait Bible for $997 and well, let’s get another shiny object innit?
Stephen Walker.
P.S. If you haven’t read Ca$hvertising, do yourself a favour and grab a copy. It’s not sexy. It’s not trendy. It won’t teach you how to go viral. But it will teach you how to actually sell things to humans, which turns out to be pretty fucking valuable when you’re trying to build a business instead of a circus act.
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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom