#THAT'S what sharing ragebait also leads to.

[leothil]

THE TROLL IS POSTING THEIR CSA FIC IN TEVAN SHIPPERS’ ASKS! This is fucking beyond rage bait at this point! My god, you will do anything, but call out the actual gross behavior! Can’t even turn anonymous off, because these freaks have burner accounts!

Why is it more important to call out the “rage bait” than, y’know, the people purposefully triggering real people?!

Ok I will answer this one. I haven't been online for almost 10h so I have no idea what's been said or rehashed during that time, but! One of the simplest and most basic rules of the internet is: if you get sent ragebait, you don't share it. For one, you don't want to subject other people to potentially triggering material, but perhaps more importantly: that's what the poster wants you to do. They want you to share your outrage about what they said, they want it to blow up, they want as much attention as possible to be given to their stuff. That's why they write that kind of upsetting material, they want a big reaction! And then send it to people they think will help them spread that around and thus spread the outrage even more. Bonus points if people start blaming each other and stir up even more bad feelings! Which is what I think this particular account was trying to do, because there's two main reasons people do stuff like this: 1) you want to upset people you don't like, so you write the worst stuff you can think of (that you don't even agree with yourself) and send it to those people. Or 2) you want to make the "side" you're not on look bad, so you write the worst thing you can think of (that you don't agree with yourself) and sprinkle in things you've seen "the other side" say to make it seem more connected to them, and send it to people on "your own side" and hope that the blame gets placed on the side you don't like.

So yeah, calling out ragebait is indeed important, I think! How are you supposed to call out someone hiding behind sockpuppets and anonymous messages? Block, report, move on! Maybe warn others if you feel like it. But don't give them the attention they crave and the outrage they're trying to stir. Don't feed the trolls! They'll just come back for more!