Chapter 1: What is rage bait and why is it significant?
We're here because your heightened awareness deserves heightened entertainment. The Last Show with David Cooper. Rage bait. It can be loud. It can be sexy. It can make you furious and it can hijack your brain. Outrage can be weaponized online and we all fall for it. So let's talk about why and how we can teach young people, our future leaders, to resist it.
There is a new course at the University of Alberta called that teaches us about rage bait.
Chapter 2: How does social media amplify outrage and division?
And I'm here with Professor of Political Science, Jared Wellesley, who works on the course. Jared, welcome to the show. Good to be here. And as well here with Peter DeVos, who's an instructor and facilitator with the course. Peter, welcome to the program.
Thank you. Nice to meet you.
So rage bait became the word of the year last year. What does this tell us about how online life is shaping, I don't know, everything right now?
Yeah, I mean, rage baiting or rage farming is really taken off in the age of social media.
Chapter 3: What strategies can we use to resist rage bait?
It involves a two-pronged strategy among folks that would love to see us more divided, right? First, they plant a seed that gets their opponents all riled up, and in reacting to that seed, they rile up their own side, right? And it just keeps going back and forth, back and forth. I mean, it happens more in terms of volume and happens more quickly.
I think the dynamics of social media also make it, because we're used to the dopamine hits, right, that we get from engaging quickly with material. A lot of us can get taken away by it, right? And as you said, David, we all fall victim to it. One of the things that I've learned, I'm sure Peter is the same,
as we've been designing this course and doing the research around it, is that, you know, we fall victim to this all the time. And it's giving us tools to help engage better with our partners.
Chapter 4: How can education help students navigate political discourse?
I think it's a tale as old as time. I think, you know, early humans around campfires were engaging in outrageous, you know, outraging each other based on what the other people in the other cave were doing. But the tools we have now, like social media, TikTok, short form videos, sharing things, it really does make it more of a problem than ever, doesn't it?
I think it amplifies, like you pointed out, David, I think it amplifies things that we have human tendencies to sort of hang out with our tribe, get sort of climb on the bandwagon. I think all of those things are human tendencies that at the best of times, they're the kind of things that help us build communities together. But social media just... It plays, it just amplifies and distorts things.
And what we're trying to do in this course is give students some sort of personal skills as well as a bit of a worldview on how to not get provoked by this stuff.
Well, let's talk about getting provoked by it because I think a lot of us, I'm probably guilty of this, think, sure, other people fall for rage bait, but not me. I know that I'm wrong when I say that, but I still like instinctively believe that it doesn't happen to me.
Chapter 5: What are the psychological impacts of polarization?
What would you want to say to people who think rage bait doesn't affect them, and yet they're on social media, they see these articles, they engage with them?
Yeah, I mean, start by looking at yourself. And I said before, as we were researching, we found that we were committing a lot of these democratic sins. I spent a lot of last summer touring around the province of Alberta talking with municipal officials and their staff who meet with folks online, meet with folks at the doorstep.
And we cataloged 34 different what we're calling pitfalls or pathologies of democratic discourse, things that range from, you know, ad hominem attacks to gaslighting to, you know, reductionist thinking and dichotomous thinking and so on. And as we went through and discussed with them, we said, how much of this do you see? And they said quite often, how much of this do you think is a problem?
Right. And some people say, well, it's just the nature of political debate and discourse. And it's not really a big problem if it's an ad hominem attack.
Chapter 6: How do we recognize our own biases in political discussions?
Then you talk to others, particularly members of marginalized groups and women, people in visible minority communities, or Edmonton city councillors who were the victims of a terrorist attack not too long ago. And they say, look, there's a path that we start down when we start letting some of these things go.
And so part of what we do in this course and the broader Common Ground Toolkit that we're developing through our research team is to give people those self-diagnostic tools, right, to recognize things. When we're doing things that aren't exactly contributing positively to the conversation.
I got to tell you, since we started this course, you'll notice that my own social media commentary has slowed down quite a bit because I'm checking myself. My drafts folder is a treasure trove for people to analyze what could be tribalist behavior.
Well, let's talk about the psychology of polarization, which your course touches upon, which I understand what happens to our brain when we see an issue presented in a certain way, in a polarizing way, in a rage baby kind of way. And then we suddenly think us versus them.
Well, I think you're, you're, you're David, you're talking exactly about some of these cognitive biases that I think we, we get into number one is all of our reasoning in the world is kind of motivated by things. And so, um,
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Chapter 7: What tools can help us engage productively in conflict?
And sometimes the motivations, the things that trigger that motivated reasoning are emotions. And so a lot of what's being activated these days is emotions. I'm reminded of this fantastic quote that a biologist, Edward O. Wilson said that, he said that the real problem of humanity is the following. We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and God-like technology.
And I think that describes exactly where we are these days.
Was this quote before large language models started being used by students?
Exactly. I think this quote is probably, I bet you, I don't know exactly the time, but I think this quote is probably from about 15, 20 years ago.
Yeah, and it's even more relevant today. Do you encourage students not to look at this content or are you mostly just encouraging them to like process it, understand their own biases?
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Chapter 8: How can curiosity about others bridge divides in discourse?
Like, is that a prevention from preventing polarizing outrage? Just not go on social media or hide your uncle who shares wacky stuff?
I think we have to be a bit more insightful in terms of what it is that triggers us. And we have to be a bit more intentional about how we engage with people in the world around us. Now, I think in the course, we're trying to put this into a slightly bigger perspective too. We're really trying to give students the tools and perspectives to be productive democratic citizens. And part of that means
becoming a bit more self-aware. Part of that means getting a better understanding of where tensions show up in our world and how we work productively with tension because our world is always going to have tensions. And because things are so complex today, there's even more spaces that we're showing up in where tensions and conflict emerges. So how do we prepare people for that kind of world?
And that's really what we're trying to do through the many modules that we have.
I think it's important not to pretend that we live in a conflict-free world, and I think it's important not to teach undergrads that we do, but rather, and this is something from your course, create conflict-intelligent people, people that can understand conflict when they see it, navigate it properly. Is that a tool that you think is lacking in modern discourse today?
I would say so. I want to get Jared jumping in here, but I would say so. I think it's also about how do we productively create conflict, okay? It's not all about getting rid of it. It's about figuring out how do we actually create meaningful tension and then have processes to de-escalate things because conflict
part of what happens when we stand up for our perspectives or we try to advocate for change is we create tension. And that's very productive force that we need to learn how to work with. And so part of the course also gives students some tools about how can they mobilize some of, how can they work productively with tension to be change makers?
Yeah. I mean, it's not about always building common ground, right? And some of our Colleagues south of the border have, when they give talks or deliver courses like this, they often get criticized. One of them is Anand Giridharadas, who says, one time he was confronted by an audience member who said, what do you expect us to do, just go up and hug a Nazi? And his response was really good.
He said, well, maybe don't start with the Nazis. But how about we start with the fact that not everybody who disagrees with you is a Nazi?
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