Being a Ragebaiter Sucks

Warning: This will be the most chronically online thing you interact with today. Please make physical contact with a plant before, during or after reading this post.

While the word “ragebait” is only a few years old, the idea of it has existed since at least the 1800s.

In the nineteenth century, so-called “yellow journalism” newspapers twisted the facts, or made them up entirely, to maintain a readership. Yellow journalism birthed the ideas of “no such thing as bad publicity” and “if it bleeds, it leads,” ideas that continue to influence the news media to this day. In the entertainment world, using outrage to boost your profile is old hat. Think Madonna and the music video for “Like a Prayer,” Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” Lady Gaga’s meat dress, reality TV in the Keeping Up with the Kardashians “watch people who make your yearly salary in the time it takes a Hot Pocket to cook pretend their life is difficult” vein. In the last decade, we’ve witnessed in real time the consequences of grievance politics seeping into the foundation of governments, countries around the world, and the media, a slow process sped up by a rash of division-stoking world leaders like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Jair Bolsonaro.

All that said, “ragebait” is a term that originates from the Internet, so of course that’s where it’s most prevalent, and it’s where we’ll land to discuss today’s topic.

Ragebait is everywhere on today’s Internet.

You’ve got wastes of resources like Jack Doherty, who earns his keep being a public nuisance: bothering people in public and hiding from consequences behind his bodyguard, blocking traffic, disrupting public events. But—and this is a microscopic concession—at least he has the decency of character (sarcasm sign) to keep his douchiness on American soil.

Morons like Johnny Somali and Vitalyzdtv don’t. Both of them, along with other dime-a-dozen freezer-temperature-IQ blights to humanity, regularly travel to other countries to harass locals, make light of sacred places, and generally do everything my Spanish professor stressed for us not to do during my semester abroad in Spain.

You’ve got your adult content ragebaiters: people like the Bop House girls and Bonnie Blue. They ragebait on two fronts. First, with low-effort content and/or outrageous sex stunts meant to taunt you, the viewer: I can film myself dancing so badly Elaine Benes looks like a ballroom professional, make a career out of sleeping with eighteen-year-old boys, and/or turn my baby shower into an orgy, and I’ll make bank from it! How’s that minimum wage job treating you? Then, exploiting the Internet’s hundred-mile-wide misogynistic streak, they do their rounds on the Zynternet, acting as devoted soldiers in the Not-Listening-to-Jeff-Winger Army, playing up their airheadedness on red pill podcasts to manipulate angry dudebros into hate-subscribing to their OnlyFans.

There are probably more examples, but those are the forms of ragebait that I see the most.

A few years ago, I thought these types had cracked a code. Sharing the Internet with these turds seemed like a ‘heads, they win; tails, I lose’ sort of situation. You can try ignoring these ignoramuses, except that’s an actively dangerous thing to do: these people’s ideas of content are tricking homeless people who can’t swim into jumping in a lake, livestreaming while driving and predictably crashing, and making fake bomb threats. React to their shenanigans, and that’s publicity. The algorithm doesn’t distinguish between regular views and hate views.

Then I got older, and smarter, and I achieved enlightenment: maturity is realizing that the best solution to scumbag Internet personalities is…sit back and let them be themselves. Because, in the long run, it sucks to ragebait for a living.

To understand why, answer this question for me: when was the last time you heard someone pearl-clutching about South Park?

In its early seasons, the Helen Lovejoy types were all over South Park’s case. Some principals banned students from wearing clothes with South Park characters on them during school hours. Real-life Helen Lovejoy Peggy Charren called South Park “dangerous to the democracy.” It was a true equal-opportunity offender: at various times, evangelical Christians, Catholics, Muslims, and Scientologists have put South Park in their crosshairs. Fast-forward to now, and these same people by and large look in South Park’s direction and shrug. In fact, Charlie Kirk, the guy who called the Super Bowl Halftime Show “Sexual Anarchy,” someone who definitely would’ve been wringing his hands over South Park had Turning Point USA been around in the nineties, found South Park’s parody of his college campus debates hilarious. South Park is still the profane, irreverent, gross, violent cartoon it was back in 1997, but on a societal level, the shock value wore off.

The same thing, ever so slowly, is starting to happen with ragebait content creators.

People are getting savvy. Most people now know that if someone with Meta Glasses or a mic and a cameraman runs up to them with questions about how many people they’ve slept with, they’re being set up. People recognize that videos of punchable-faced people slapping other people’s phones out of their hands or moaning in people’s ears are meant to make you mad and instead click “Not Interested” or “Block.”  More importantly, while the response often should be permabans from social media and perhaps keeping a jail cell warm for a year or three, consequences have finally started to arrive for some of these ragebaiting morons.

Jack Doherty, for his previously-mentioned incident of crashing his car on a livestream, was banned from Kick. He briefly managed to get his account back, but was quickly re-banned after fist-fighting fellow smoothbrain streamer N3on on-camera. Since his ban, he’s been arrested for drug possession, banned for life from all PGA events for unsuccessfully trying to heckle a player on the green, and is currently on house arrest, possibly for those drug charges, but that isn’t entirely clear.

Johnny Somali, after avoiding legal consequences in Japan and Israel, finally ran out of luck in South Korea. Somali played North Korean music in a public space and disrupted a restaurant’s business by purposely spilling food. Where he f—ed up was giving a lapdance and kisses to a statue honoring comfort women, Korean women forced into sex slavery during Japan’s occupation of South Korea. He f—ed up even harder by making deepfakes of him and Korean streamer BongBong_IRL. For his trolling, Somali began a six-month prison sentence in April. Once his sentence is complete, Somali will definitely be barred from working with children and the disabled for five years. There are rumors of him being deported and barred from returning to South Korea, as well as being placed on South Korea’s sex offender registry for the deepfakes.

Vitalyzdtv, he of assaulting random women and harassing people dressed up as a zombie,  Johnny Somali’d too close to the sun in the Philippines. He was arrested for harassing Filipino citizens on livestream. Vitaly, a Russian immigrant to the US, was deported to his native Russia after being jailed for nine months. 

Natalie Reynolds, the lady who tricked a homeless woman who couldn’t swim into jumping into a lake? I’ve had the misfortune of having her videos come through my FYP, and her comment sections are full of people making sure she never lives down the lake incident. She was caught on camera crying at the front doors of TikTok’s headquarters after she was temporarily banned.

Small-time YouTube prankster Tanner Cook got shot by a DoorDash driver he tried to prank. Tanner was the fortunate one; he survived. Timothy Wilks, another wannabe prankster thought it would be hee-larious to bluff-charge at people with a knife in his hand. He did this in Tennessee. Guess how that ended.

Even if making douchebag content doesn’t land you in a prison cell, a hospital bed or a casket, it’s still effectively a Faustian bargain. For a while, you’ll do absolutely massive numbers, and while you’ll keep them on paper because most people are too lazy to actually unfollow or unsubscribe, the views will eventually show the truth of your subscribers jumping ship. Jack Doherty: fifteen million subscribers, 85,000 views on a month-old video. There’s a reason so many ragebait content creators end up e-begging on Twitch/Kick/Rumble or trying to lure their viewers into crypto scams: because these people are unhirable.

What company would hire Kevin Leonardo when a quick Google search would produce footage of him shoving his anus into a camera and allegations of him roleplaying as an Epstein victim?

What HR company would voluntarily onboard Jack “traffic blocking car crashing fight picking PR nightmare” Doherty?

If Tia Billinger ever decides to hang up the Bonnie Blue identity, do you think her bodily fluid-soaked digital footprint will prop doors open or seal them closed?

This is all assuming the theoretical HR departments have to dig to find this stuff, and everyone in the department is completely oblivious to the entire corner of YouTube that keeps receipts on these people—your MoistCr1TiKaLs, your Internet Anarchists, your D’Angelo Wallaces, etc.

So that’s why being a ragebaiter sucks. Short-term success comes at the expense of Stitching a big honkin’ scarlet “a” on your chest.

Take comfort in that next time you feel something on social media starting to raise your blood pressure.

Now watch this troll get punched in the face.