I keep seeing people call all sorts of things that absolutely should not be “rage” inducing rage bait and I’m confused how this term has evolved, what does it mean when something like a dumb question or a slightly censored meme is now “rage bait”? To me rage bait means something explicitly made to make you made, playing the devils advocate or purposefully edgy and polarizing content but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. To me it it feels like the way woke just means anything I don’t like, is the other side of the coin rage bait is also anything I don’t like I just don’t happen to be a conservative? Sorry if this post is rage bait, I’m genuinely asking and I have a touch of the ‘tism.
Rage in that context doesn’t mean the full on definition, irritating or annoying are enough to qualify as the “rage” part of the term. It’s engagement bait with that as the method. The other part as someone else pointed out is the intent.
The post you allude to qualified but you were reposting it without the intent, so while the meme itself is ragebait as the original creator had the intent it only applies to you by association not directly. Most readers won’t make the distinction without knowing that’s the case.
Like I saw a post with someone asking a stupid question about a fountain. I was like how is this rage inducing like, in any way to someone who called it rage bait then they said it was due to the comments, but like… that doesn’t make the post rage bait does it? How would you know the intent based off the original question/image/whatever? I understand comments are easy but I don’t get the completely generic stuff being called rage bait without context I guess?