That viral Reddit post does not say a lot about society

An interesting fact I’ve noticed is that people in my ingroup are sane, decent and attractive, and people in my outgroup are deranged, immoral and repulsive. 

You don’t believe me? Well, here’s a story about people in my ingroup being sane, decent and attractive, and people in my outgroup being deranged, immoral and repulsive. Oh, sure, the author is anonymous, and there are no verifiable details. But it sounds true. And even if it isn’t, it says a lot about society that I could believe it.

This column is about a niche subject. But it is about something that really irritates me. And one of the blessings of having a column is that you can write about niche subjects that really irritate you. 

Social media is full of people posting screenshots of anonymous stories, primarily from the forum-based social media platform Reddit, that confirm their biases. I’m sure this happens from a lot of different angles. For example, I’m sure there are a lot of women seething over fictional examples of men being “trash”. For me, though, on social media, I often see it when it comes to men lamenting modern women.

What do I mean? I mean someone will post a story about a woman being farcically malicious or wrongheaded, in a manner intended — and I do mean intended — to inspire rage or schadenfreude. “My wife is mad at me because I don’t want to buy her a second home where she can sleep with other guys,” someone will post, “Am I the asshole?” “THIS IS THE STATE OF MODERN WOMEN,” some imbecile will post on X, above a screenshot of the “story”, attracting tens of thousands of likes and reposts, as if it was not written precisely for that purpose.

What makes you a real tribalist is when you think that people you dislike would talk about themselves in the same terms that you would have described them

Screenshots of profiles from dating apps are another online favourite. “38, 150kg, 4 kids with 5 different dads,” a bio will read, “Must be 6 feet tall and make more than £100,000 a year.” I’m not saying, by the way, that it is impossible for such people to exist. What makes you a real tribalist is when you think that people you dislike would talk about themselves in the same terms that you would have described them. When someone so perfectly fits your biases, there is at least a good chance that funny business is going on.

These fake stories and profiles are two genres of a form of online content called “ragebait”. “Ragebait” is a term that you can tell was invented in America because it is so linguistically literal. It defines media which is intended, with an unhealthy dose of disingenuousness, to inspire outrage. Not all of it is fictitious. But a lot of it is. Some of it has an ideological angle. Some is meant to wind up any decent human being. The YouTuber Paul Platt demonstrated how it works by making up his own fictional stories and seeing them thrive among people who thought that they actually happened.

I think a lot of people don’t care if ragebait is true. They just enjoy discussing it as if it is a lowbrow form of philosophical dilemma. When people are using ragebait to confirm their political perspective, though, that’s a bigger problem. I’m not saying that they are necessarily aware that the “evidence” is almost certainly fraudulent. But they need to bang their heads against a wall once or twice and realise that this is the case.

Of course, some people who post anonymous stories on the internet are being honest. In some cases, their stories might turn out to be plausible and significant. If, for example, there was a Reddit forum for breatharians — i.e. people who live without food — and it began filling up with stories about people losing energy and weight, we could combine that with all the other kinds of evidence we have that breatharianism is unhealthy, and use it as another data point in the case for food.

But this in no way applies to common forms of ragebait. My argument is not that wrong people do not exist or that bad people do not exist. If no one was wrong or bad, we might not have significant disagreements in the first place. But when everyone — or almost everyone — that you define as being somehow other than yourself is wrong and bad, you make yourself ridiculous by trying to justify such an absurd proposition. 

What is especially ironic for male consumers of misogynistic ragebait is that their argument is often that women are manipulable and emotional, yet here they are having their emotions manipulated. It is a kind of spiritual cuckolding — built around the debauchery and disrespect of women who do not actually exist.