Resist Rage Bait
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is rage bait and why is it significant?
0:03–0:31
2
How does social media amplify outrage and division?
0:31–1:02
3
What strategies can we use to resist rage bait?
1:02–1:50
4
How can education help students navigate political discourse?
1:50–2:59
5
What are the psychological impacts of polarization?
2:59–3:54
6
How do we recognize our own biases in political discussions?
3:54–5:10
7
What tools can help us engage productively in conflict?
5:10–6:05
8
How can curiosity about others bridge divides in discourse?
6:05–10:05
Speakers
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