A lot of social engagement through social media is driven by impressions such as up votes, favorites, likes, etc. Unfortunately, an easy way to promote engagement and such lies in rage bait. This is likely due to the visceral emotional response generated by rage baiting. I would also extend this issue to how ubiquitous instant gratification is to the internet and social media. People tend to acquire clout through reacting to something quickly, which isn’t always well-thought out. Add in the notion of mob mentality, and you have a recipe for the rapid exponential propagation of negative words, thoughts, and emotions. People also tend to not have productive ways of channeling their frustrations and issues, so they often see other entities on the Internet as just a name, sometimes less than that.

There’s also a heavy amount of tribalism across a variety of domains which allows one to take refuge from this rage baiting by finding other like-minded individuals to identify with. In some cases, the stress of everyday life or what have you removes a sense of agency or power in one’s life and sometimes people cope with this by developing a sense of superiority through whichever group or ideal that they identify with. This cycle repeats itself until there is a constant battle between any given groups where people attempt to elevate their self-worth by putting those that they dont agree with down, while emphasizing the superiority of their own ideal, IMO. I could be totally wrong ofc. I’m hardly perfect.

It’s been a pretty exhausting experience. I’m tired of it as well; my fondness for engaging with people has diminished greatly.