Opinion | The Rage-Bait Economy: When 15 Seconds Of Notoriety Becomes Permanent Record

The culture of outrage that social media has lovingly fostered has birthed an entire subculture of rage-baiting

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What invasive social media has injected is a performative idealism that cares more about personal positioning than collective impact. Representational image/AFP

A Raksha Bandhan ad featuring an inappropriately dressed Bollywood star. A young protester insulting the PM of India in obscene language. A tourist throwing a hissy fit because a road was blocked. Almost every day, we come across more and more examples of people—students, tourists, brand managers, ad execs, writers, journalists, actors, and so on—sometimes venting, sometimes being deliberately contrarian, sometimes being unknowingly offensive. In nine cases out of ten, they know full well that their rants would gain them 15 seconds of notoriety. Once they go viral, the penny drops and abject apologies follow. It’s a familiar pattern, so why do so many fall for it?

The culture of outrage that social media has lovingly fostered has birthed an entire subculture of rage-baiting. In this twisted parallel universe, everything is worth being newsworthy, even if it is only for a nanosecond. What has fuelled this rage-bait epidemic is the nature of the beast. While social media is click-happy and momentary in nature, its motherlode, the internet, has an inexhaustible memory. Every online folly is therefore meticulously filed away to be extracted and exhibited at the appropriate time. Like the proverbial elephant, the internet never forgets.

Which brings us back to why people would want infamy, knowing it will live forever, a watermark that no amount of deleting the offending remark or video will erase. Sometimes, it is a clever marketing trick—any publicity is good publicity, so for those who make a living out of their viral vibe, this is just a pitch, trolling be damned. But for those not monetising their infamy, however, it’s a spectacular show of poor judgement. People can and often do act inappropriately. They say and do things they shouldn’t in the heat of the moment. They posture because it seems cool at that point, never mind the consequences. This is true for all age groups, but it is particularly true for the young who often don’t have the lived experience to make a distinction between idealism and pack posturing. The idea of cocking a snook at authority—school, parents, boss/co-workers, government, police…you name it—is something young minds are naturally drawn to and it has often made them heroic symbols of sacrifice. One look at the young revolutionaries from Khudiram Bose, Prafulla Chaki to Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad, Pritilata Waddedar to Barin Ghosh, among so many others, shows what idealism can inspire in young minds. These brave young men and women were swept away by the nationalism of the times and gave their lives for India’s freedom.

There are young people similarly inspired in today’s world too, working on cutting-edge research, helping their communities, working for something bigger than themselves. The idealism of the young can and does bring change. The problem is the world that the young now inhabit. What invasive social media has injected is a performative idealism that cares more about personal positioning than collective impact. Everything plays out in front of our phone cameras, making us the stars of our own stories. There is no greater entitlement than zero fear of consequences, and that’s the fearlessness social media breeds.

Not surprisingly, an ever-increasing number of countries are banning social media for the very young. Already, Australia and New Zealand have banned children under 16 from using and accessing social media platforms. According to UNESCO data, 114 education systems globally have introduced some kind of social media and smartphone control in schools, which works out to just under 60% of the countries around the world, up from 24% in 2023. Societies are increasingly coming around to the POV that constant byte-sized dopamine hits may not be great for young minds. Not only does it make them break everything down to the size of a reel or a post, but it lulls them into thinking their impact will be just as momentary.

While it may take a while before some of the deleterious effects of 24×7 online presence get flushed out, the impact it has had on the way society consumes information and entertainment cannot be wished away. If you inhabit a world in which the deeply personal is also totally public, there’s no security moat to protect the private self from the public positioning. For the nameless, faceless followers who like and troll, both are fair game. In a sense, it has turned perfectly anonymous private individuals into public figures. Fifteen seconds of public infamy can and often does translate into a lifetime of private regret. And that’s a consequence many viral veterans of the social media world have not quite got their heads around.

Nandini Sengupta is a freelance writer and author of several books. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.

About the Author

Nandini Sengupta

Nandini Sengupta is a freelance writer and author of several books.

Original source: https://www.news18.com/movies/movie-reviews/