(Youtube and) Rage bait

[Reginald_001]

I grew up in the early 80's. A time without cell phones, internet, media and socials. I remember news came from the television, and often days later, after it happened. I remember playing outside in the garden when we were told to go inside because Chernobyl just exploded.

 

I'm not trying to say 'look how old/smart' I am. Just want to show that I experienced the entirety of the Internet from day one. The 56baud modem on a commodore BBS, the phone lines, the first porn sites, the good, the bad, the ugly. The free internet when it was free. Really free.

 

In the last 20 years something changed and it's culminating now, exploding: Rage Bait.

 

It seems like everything on the internet and social media is designed to be rage bait, in order to engage more people. Good or bad publicity, people don't care as long as it's publicity. Nuance died completely, argumented debated died completely and 'personal attack' type debate took its place. I did some research, literally hooked up a heart monitor while casually scrolling through youtube. I clicked some politically charged videos, on racism, lbtgq, wars, you know everything that's 'hot' right now. And before long I was watching videos of people murdering other people, beatings, lynch mobs, guys with seemingly high intellect and proper vocabulary claiming that lizards are among us.. (And my heartrate was through the roof)

 

The internet got sick. Not just sick, it got terminally ill and then.. it died.

And seemingly, if you believe Social media the world looks to be on fire. 

 

But what really really bothered me was how quickly social media tries to pull you into a bubble, either left or right. Youtube is ESPECIALLY bad at this. With a few clicks you're deep into racist, extreme fundamentalist religious freaks, conspiracies.. the worst humanity has to offer. It's right there and youtube seems to PUSH you towards it, hoping to engage as much people as possible.

 

And the fucking hypocrisy... You can't say 'suicide' you can't say 'killed'.. because of 'community standards', but with 2 clicks you find an Imam saying that all women need to whear a Burqa, or a blue haired noseringed lady claiming that 'all men are pigs', or a Trump supporter calmly explaining how it's fine if foreigners are shot to death, or a leftist environmental nut claiming that it's not sociopathic to wish for half the population of earth to die because 'it's good for the environment'.

 

Did everybody go nuts?

It's not just 'left' or 'right' or 'religious' or 'gay' or 'racist'.. it's everyone.. deeper and deeper into hate and polarization. I know I'm ranting but I just got off a wild ride, trying to research how these 'rabbit holes' work and I saw stuff that will make you lose faith in humanity quickly.

 

One video I saw did inspire me though, it was a speech by Denzel Washington, he was asked about racism, and what he said stuck with me: "We should try a lot harder to connect instead of constantly hating eachother over our differences". 

 

Maybe I'm just old, make fun of me for wanting a calmer, more peaceful reality, one with less hate, less ridicule, just less misery.

I sure as hell know one thing, youtube, twitter, bluesky, chatgpt, openAI, claude, CNN, NBC, FOX, BBC, NOS (dutch news) etc.. etc.. none of them are helping to make the world more peaceful and have less misery. 

 

 

Edited Monday at 08:49 PM by Reginald_001

[judge007]

+1

[FauxFurry]

What you see now was always there under the surface but the technology was not advanced enough to feed into people's fight-or-flight impulses quite so expertly.

 

Salacious Yellow Journalism, tabloids, trash talk TV and the like was just an inferior version of that portion of the Internet, that being a generator of revenue based upon people who believe that there are constantly under siege thus they also believe that they rely on the 'tellers of truth' to share information with them out of the goodness of their hearts rather than partial information or complete misinformation for the purposes of profit or control.

 

People had to talk to each other in person more than they could 'learn' about them through the media so misinformation did not survive first contact with real people. These days, it is easy to condition a person with lies 24/7 so it does not matter if they have brief moments of clarity.

[Siemann]

"The system doesn't fear your anger, it loves your anger. Anger is easy to pivot, easy to turn against your neighbor. What the system fears is solidarity: it fears the moment we stop looking at each other as competitors for crumbs, and start looking at the baker."

~Andor video essay

 

To make a long and complex story short, as investigative journalism hollowed out from funding cuts and the rise of 24-7 cable news, so did the bedrock of factual consensus that formed our shared reality. As the World Wide Web got mainstream traction and advertisers shifted their attention online, local print newspapers entered a death spiral that starved the information food chain. Into the void came the burgeoning social media platforms, chock-full of people with little real knowledge but lots of opinions. But because you can converse directly with Joe Schmo instead of waiting a week for a formal response from the editor's desk, you presume a direct rapport that side-steps your natural skepticism and absorb conspiratorial seeds on good faith. Then when "mainstream media" says you're wrong, your reflex is to trust your e-friend out of (parasocial) familiarity rather than make a critical analysis of the facts.

 

@FauxFurry says this modern malaise is the logical endpoint of existing trends, but there's one important caveat: the "old media" you were browsing by choice, the "new media" is choosing you. The democratization of information access is a double-edged sword: back in the print age, and even the cable networks, there were pretty clear lines between real journalism, the op-eds, and the schlock, and you had to go digging for the hardcore conspiracists. Now they're laid out side-by-side with no warning signs beyond your own intuition. The algorithms behind the Facebook/YouTube/Xitter pipelines are extremist by design. The site runners could prioritize legitimate sources and commentators who have a clue, but long-form measured analysis doesn't stoke the emotional charge that drives Engagement the way anger does. There is a clear authoritarian ideology to today's techbro cult, but the practical evil is chillingly banal: monetizing your attention.

 

They call it social media, but its MO is fundamentally antisocial: it counterfeits an online community while playing divide-and-conquer into microtargeted interest groups. The good news is, we can fight back, and all it takes to start is sitting down face to face. It's easy to demonize an opponent when they're abstracted into some distant Other, but the psych studies show that if you can get people talking with rather than at each other, respectfully and honestly and not playing "gotcha" debates, the peaks flatten out and confrontation moves towards consensus. The trick is to stop raging long enough to listen.

[rafal112]

Biggest misconception is that YouTube is trying to recommend videos you'll enjoy.

It isn't.

It's trying to predict what will make you click **one more time**.

Those are two completely different goals.

 

The algorithm has no reason to leave you feeling "finished."

 

If a two-hour documentary about space leaves you satisfied, you've learned something... and you might close the app.

From YouTube's perspective, that's a lost opportunity.

 

But if the next recommendation leaves you with a new question, a contradiction, or something that makes you think "That can't be right...", you're far more likely to click again.

The system keeps replacing answers with new questions, because every unanswered question is another opportunity for another click.

It doesn't need to manipulate your beliefs. It only needs to keep your curiosity unresolved.

That's why the goal isn't necessarily to help you understand a subject from beginning to end.

The goal is to keep the session alive. A user who feels satisfied often leaves.

A user who feels there is always one more thing to check usually stays.

 

 

Social media is optimized to prevent your search from ever ending.

When there are lots of clicks, there's lots of money.

Edited Friday at 06:29 AM by rafal112

[AKM]

On 6/22/2026 at 7:30 PM, FauxFurry said:

Salacious Yellow Journalism, tabloids, trash talk TV and the like was just an inferior version of that portion of the Internet, that being a generator of revenue

And that's pretty much my take on the 'why' behind why all this is happening.  It's happening because that's what brings in revenue for the owners.  Period.

Particularly the 'even bad publicity is publicity' bit.  You get to watching, you are giving them your attention, and by extension (they hope) your money, sooner or later.

In the mean time, there went yet another portion of the only asset you actually have: your time.

 

13 minutes ago, rafal112 said:

Biggest misconception is that YouTube is trying to recommend videos you'll enjoy.

It isn't.

 

I absolutely hate the rise of the "short".  So many times I have seen people who know point out that 'It is literally shortening our attention spans.  Go watch some hour long well researched documentaries already!"


Oh, and speaking of rage (although this really belongs in the rant thread), the absolutely UNGODLY amount of advertisements on Youtube now.  Want to watch something?  We want to sell you something first; BEFORE you even get started on the video., so here, have an advertisement for something you don't want and couldn't afford even if you did want it.  Oh, wait, it's been three minutes!  Here, have ANOTHER advertisement.

[RedHeadAngel]

All of this is why I stay away from the news and social media. That may be surprising to some people, because I'm 20, but I don't feed into all that bullshit. It's also probably why I'm not as stupid as most people my age.

[Grey Cloud]

3 hours ago, AKM said:

And that's pretty much my take on the 'why' behind why all this is happening.  It's happening because that's what brings in revenue for the owners.  Period.

Particularly the 'even bad publicity is publicity' bit.  You get to watching, you are giving them your attention, and by extension (they hope) your money, sooner or later.

In the mean time, there went yet another portion of the only asset you actually have: your time.

 

 

I absolutely hate the rise of the "short".  So many times I have seen people who know point out that 'It is literally shortening our attention spans.  Go watch some hour long well researched documentaries already!"


Oh, and speaking of rage (although this really belongs in the rant thread), the absolutely UNGODLY amount of advertisements on Youtube now.  Want to watch something?  We want to sell you something first; BEFORE you even get started on the video., so here, have an advertisement for something you don't want and couldn't afford even if you did want it.  Oh, wait, it's been three minutes!  Here, have ANOTHER advertisement.

But you have two links to AI image generators in your sig. You are part of the problem not part of the solution.

[FauxFurry]

Case and point. Many non-Americans learned that most of what they had been told about America from the mainstream media and online hucksters alike was a lie by simply going to the place and interacting with its people during the Football World Cup.

 

[Grey Cloud]

On 6/26/2026 at 7:12 PM, FauxFurry said:

Case and point. Many non-Americans learned that most of what they had been told about America from the mainstream media and online hucksters alike was a lie by simply going to the place and interacting with its people during the Football World Cup.

 

 

Surely you can do better than this?

"Foreigners are amazed by school buses, the amount of space we have here, mailboxes and especially... Buc-ees and Costco?!"

 

Edit: It's 'case in point' not 'case and point'.

Edited 5 hours ago by Grey Cloud

[Grey Cloud]

No 'foreigners' required. Yes, I realise that the site is (allegedly) comedic but the stats quoted are genuine.

 

Stats are from 07 secs to 47 secs in:

Really American

[Reginald_001]

Looks like I'm not the only one thinking about this.

 

 

[Pater Aelred]

On YouTube I just stick to music, game modding,  AI entertainment, and nerds talking about archaeology, history, prehistory. 

 

Closest I get to that other stuff is bigfoot videos, and The Why Files. 

[Coding_Onion]

Whelp, from time to time i do have to give myself the reality check that the funny-triangle-website*, even though i discovered and learned a lot through it, is in the end just a service from a company on the stock exchange that probably has grown out of most ethics the inital founders may have held (or maybe its conception was to monopolize the market it now holds from the beginning, idk about the history) and that will also probably use any rescource it gets to increase its profitability and/or shareholder satisfaction.

 

*(since i am not sponsored for mentioning its name, i won't. Ha, checkmate)