How content creators profit from rage-baiting

Marketplace Tech

American Public Media

Technology, News

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2024

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Have you ever found yourself angry or outraged at a piece of content on social media? A disgusting recipe or shocking opinion? It could be intentional. Social media influencer Winta Zesu freely admits that she provokes for profit — and made $150,000 last year by posting content meant to elicit “hate comments.” She’s part of a growing group of online creators making rage-bait content, where the goal is simple: record videos, produce memes and write posts that make other users viscerally angry, then bask in the thousands, or even millions, of shares and likes. The BBC’s Megan Lawton reports.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, everybody, it's Kai. Time is running out to give a tax-deductible donation to Marketplace before the end of the year. Donate today to support the public service journalism that you rely on.
0:10.0	Every donation and every dollar helps us plan for the new year ahead. Go to Marketplace.org
0:15.2	slash donate and invest in news you value and trust. That's Marketplace.org slash donate, or you can follow the link in the show notes.
0:24.5	There's no such thing as negative attention in the attention economy.
0:29.9	From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.
0:33.0	I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.
0:49.8	Here's 10 weird tricks to get more clicks on social media, and you won't believe the last one.
0:58.0	Yes, the incentives of the Internet have changed how we communicate online, for better or mostly worse.
1:08.6	Posts have been search engine optimized, insta-filtered, AI-slopped, and increasingly engineered to maximize negative reactions.
1:14.0	This is the practice of rage-baiting with content like an obviously disgusting recipe, provocative opinion or debased behavior. And it's become, well, all the rage on
1:21.6	social media lately. Because it's almost guaranteed to drive engagement. And as the BBC's Megan Lottin reports, all engagement
1:30.6	is good engagement. How pretty can you actually get? Can you actually like literally get any
1:37.2	pretty? Welcome to the online world of Winter Zesu. Every single video of mine that has gained like
1:43.3	millions and millions of views is because of hate comments.
1:46.8	The 24-year-old social media influencer says she made 150,000 US dollars last year exploiting a new online trend, rage baiting.
1:57.3	Literally just if people get mad, the video's going to go viral. I can make money on TikTok.
2:01.7	Instagram is paying, like YouTube pays you.
2:04.3	So I was like, okay, I'm just going to post everything on every platform.
2:08.3	She's part of a growing group of online creators making ragebait content, where the goal is simple.
2:13.8	Record videos, produce memes, and write posts that make other users viscerally angry
2:19.6	than bask in the thousands or even millions of shares and likes. I just have that spark in me.
2:26.3	I'm just super cute. The more content they create, the more engagement they get, the more that they get
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from American Public Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of American Public Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.