Anger is an old ally/foe of the human species. It has accompanied us since the earliest times and from time immemorial. As per the Scientists at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology (University of California Santa Barbara) Anger is an “evolved bargaining system.” Leda Cosmides talks about the recalibrational theory of anger, as per this theory anger has been designed in human beings to “nonconsciously orchestrate the individual’s responses to interpersonal conflicts of interest so that the individual bargains effectively.” The primary function of anger if used successfully is “the recalibration upwards of the other person’s tendency to place weight on the angry person’s welfare.”
The primary job of anger is to make us feel uncomfortable. It makes us pay attention to our discomfort and deals with that using appropriate measures. The keywords in that last line are “makes us pay attention” because that is what the social media platforms are banking on. In the words of Tristan Harris who is a Design Ethicist “Magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people’s perception, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it. Once you know how to push people’s buttons, you can play them like a piano. And this is exactly what product designers do to your mind. They play your psychological vulnerabilities (consciously and unconsciously) against you in the race to grab your attention.”
This leads us to the entire genre of rage bait. In India, we are seeing a growing number of “content creators” in this very specific genre. The genre is not limited to a specific set of people. You have a Hindustani Bhau on one side who seems to be angry at everything and at the same time one has erstwhile Tik Tokers like Team 07 who seem to have no restraint whatsoever and have been in the news in the past for directly inciting violence. It does not matter what the issue is, every discretion, every issue has only one response and that is of anger.
In the world of rage bait creators, the world is on fire and they are the firefighters dousing this fire with their words and theatrics. They are in a war, it isn’t that they like doing this, but they have to do it because they are our saviours. They are fighting the good fight. But are they really fighting the good fight? In a recent video that was posted on Twitter, you saw popular rage baiters Imtiaz Sheikh alias Umesh Dada and Shubham Mishra giving rape threats to Agrima Joshua for her comments on the Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Smarak. In another video, you see a Muslim man threatening a Hindu Sadhu with a sword. And it just doesn’t end there, we have numerous videos that get millions of views where we have blatant animal abuse or normalisation of acid attacks.
This leads us to a much larger discussion. What is the right way of tackling this problem of rage bait? In fact, is rage bait a problem as a whole, or are only some forms of rage bait a problem? Is mere condemnation enough? Do we need some kind of censorship? What should be allowed to be aired and what shouldn’t? Where is that line that we draw in the sand when we say this will not be tolerated legally? If the abuses of Hindustani Bhau are not fine, then why are other content creators like Stand-Up comics allowed to get away with outrageous views? Is mother f$#ker cool and mad$#ch%d bad? It is time we have a larger discussion about rage bait related content in India. Whether it’s a Hindustani Bhau or a Team 07 or some obscure Stand-Up comic that is creating content, the rules have to be the same for everyone. In my personal opinion, the only line that should be drawn is the one set by court judgment given in the Brandenburg vs Ohio State case. Other than that no matter how outrageous or cringy the content is, we should let it remain online.
But the one thing we do need to talk about is the underlying reason that we have this surge of rage bait content. It does not matter which platform you are on right now, each and every platform functions on this basic premise. These platforms are exploiting our innate weaknesses and there is no statutory warning like in the case of cigarettes, alcohol or other hard drugs. We need to start asking some tough questions from these social media platforms about their algorithms. As social media addicts, we deserve to know the drug that we are being served. Right now, our drug peddler i.e. the social media platform does not even tell us that it is actually selling us a drug. The peddler seems to be hiding behind the veil of calling itself a mere technology platform. But they aren’t mere tech platforms, they are a lot more than that. They are hijacking our brains and we don’t even get a statutory warning. Freedom is the essence of our being. But can we really have true freedom online if we are not even aware of the basis on which these tech platforms function? We are being denied our freedom of choice when information is hidden from us by these digitally manufactured, drug-infused, rage bait algorithms. As Epictetus had once said “Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing Else.”