#engagement bait

[alex51324]

Help?

I need a screenshot of a really blatant engagement bait item for an information literacy session I'm teaching, and now that I need one, Facebook isn't giving me any*.

I had in mind one of the kind that's a really dumb trivia questions--"there are no US states that begin and end with the same letter," or "Only really smart people can name five animals that start with the letter M," that kind of thing--but I could rework my text to use something else.

So if you see anything like that in the next day or so, can you do me a favor and take a screenshot? Just paste it into the replies, and I can copy it out of there.

(*It's giving me bad AI photos of patriotic subjects instead, because I fell for it and clicked into one to see if anyone had commented on how several of the US flags shown had two fields of stars.)

[hotpikmin]

which 1 r u (this is engagement bait )

[critical-skeptic]

The AI Bait Farm: Social Media’s Death Spiral Toward a “Dead Internet”

Social media, once hailed as the digital agora—a global forum for connection, community, and expression—is now collapsing under its own weight. What we’re seeing isn’t just the rise of engagement bait or low-effort content farming; we’re witnessing the systematic erosion of authenticity, creativity, and relevance in real time. A plague of AI-generated imagery, emotionally manipulative captions, and algorithmic engagement farming has turned platforms like Facebook into breeding grounds for digital junk food: empty calories designed to elicit clicks, not meaningful interaction.

It’s tempting to dismiss these posts as benign annoyances, but that would underestimate the scale of the problem. These aren’t isolated gimmicks but symptoms of a much larger trend that risks accelerating the so-called “Dead Internet Theory.” And while this theory may sound like dystopian hyperbole, the patterns emerging are impossible to ignore.

What’s Happening Right Now?

Scroll any social media feed, and you’ll encounter the same formulaic garbage on repeat:

Emotionally Charged AI-Generated Content: Glamorous “old” women, impossibly muscular veterans, or attractive models in bizarrely curated patriotic or religious contexts. These images aren’t just unrealistic—they’re uncanny, almost dreamlike, betraying their machine-made origins. The posts are paired with captions like “God bless veterans 🇺🇸,” or “My husband just called me fat… Should I leave him?”—phrases designed to spark outrage or sympathy and lure you into engaging.

Engagement Loops: The visible caption is always vague or incomplete, forcing curiosity-clicks. Comments are flooded with spam or scam accounts promoting phishing links, further eroding trust and degrading the space.

Virality via Exploitation: These posts prey on universal human emotions—empathy, nationalism, anger, or intrigue. But their purpose isn’t to inspire or connect; it’s to hijack your attention, feeding the algorithmic gods who reward viral reach with ad revenue or data exploitation.

Proliferation of Bots and Bad Actors: Many of these accounts are entirely fake—AI-created personas operated by bot farms or individuals running automated content machines. Their purpose isn’t just engagement; it’s often outright malicious, funneling traffic to scams or phishing attempts.

The Connection to “Dead Internet Theory”

The Dead Internet Theory suggests that much of the content we interact with online is no longer produced by humans but by bots, algorithms, and automated systems. According to this idea, the internet as we know it is no longer a thriving ecosystem of organic human activity but an elaborate facade—an echo chamber of fake engagement designed to sustain platforms financially.

Here’s why this matters: platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are beginning to resemble the early symptoms of Dead Internet Theory in action. Just as spam and bots overtook chatrooms like Yahoo Messenger in the late 2000s, social media is now becoming a wasteland of fake interactions, auto-generated content, and meaningless noise. Back then, the spam crisis killed platforms overnight as users fled the sinking ship. Today, social media is far too entrenched in our lives to collapse outright—but it’s showing signs of terminal decay.

Why This Matters

Proliferation is Exploding: AI tools have made it absurdly easy to generate realistic images, plausible captions, and entire fake personas. What used to require a skilled designer or content creator can now be achieved by anyone with access to free tools. This democratization of fakery is flooding the internet at a scale unimaginable even five years ago.

Authenticity is Losing the War: Social media’s original value was its ability to connect real people and foster genuine conversations. When most of what you see is fake, the ability to trust anything erodes. Even legitimate content creators are overshadowed by bots churning out endless garbage.

Runaway Algorithmic Incentives: Platforms profit from engagement, no matter how low-quality it is. Every click on an AI-generated post boosts ad revenue and data collection. In a perverse way, platforms have no incentive to fix this problem because the garbage works. It keeps users scrolling and interacting, even if that interaction is meaningless.

Psychological Exhaustion: Fake content exploits human emotions, but the constant bombardment of manipulative bait is exhausting. Users disengage not just from the fake posts but from the platform itself. This creates a vicious cycle: as genuine users leave, bots and bad actors fill the void.

The Parallel to Chatroom Collapse: Yahoo Chat and similar platforms died when spam and bots overwhelmed the system. Users fled because the signal-to-noise ratio became unbearable. Social media risks the same fate—but on a global scale.

Where This Leads: The Dead Internet in Action

If unchecked, this runaway trend has clear consequences:

A Content Wasteland: As fake posts dominate feeds, genuine voices will be drowned out. Social media will lose its relevance as a platform for real interaction.

Hyper-Skepticism: As more content is exposed as fake, users will begin questioning everything—even legitimate posts. This erosion of trust has broader implications for how we engage with the internet as a whole.

Collapse of Platforms: While platforms like Facebook might be too big to fail outright, they risk becoming relics of a bygone era, replaced by smaller, niche platforms that prioritize authenticity (or so we hope).

What Can Be Done?

Demand Better Algorithms: Platforms need to prioritize authenticity over engagement, even at the cost of ad revenue. This means investing in better moderation tools to weed out bots and spam, rather than rewarding it.

Raise Awareness: Most users don’t realize how prolific and fake much of their feed is. Calling it out—not just with comments but through larger discussions—can help push the issue into the spotlight.

Support Genuine Content: Follow and engage with real creators, especially those calling out or exposing these trends. Visibility matters, and genuine content needs all the help it can get.

Educate Yourself: Learn to spot fake content. Look for subtle tells: overly smooth skin, incoherent details (like garbled name tags), or too-perfect lighting. The more you recognize these patterns, the less likely you are to fall for the bait.

Final Thoughts: A Warning Shot

Social media is heading down the same path as the chatrooms of old: a slow, suffocating decline into irrelevance. But unlike Yahoo Chat, which we abandoned without much consequence, social media is woven into the fabric of our lives. If it collapses—or worse, becomes an entirely “dead” internet of bots and fake engagement—the consequences for society are far-reaching.

What’s happening now isn’t inevitable, but it is accelerating. And unless platforms, users, and creators fight back against the onslaught of AI spam and engagement farming, we’ll find ourselves living in a digital wasteland, endlessly scrolling through meaningless noise. The time to act is now—before the last vestiges of authenticity are buried under a pile of algorithmic garbage.

[toontwink]

+1 note on this post = +1 inch on my peanis

[burgerror]

we need to start gatekeeping the division symbol we used back in like grade 3 nobody fucking uses it except for morons looking to engage in interaction bait because nobody knows how to use PEMDAS/BEDMAS/whatever. just use a fraction you Dumb Cunt

shit like this pisses me the Fuck Off if i ever catch you posting this shit i will fucking kill you dead

[amalgamationillustration]

If anyone ever asks what trauma dumping and/or 'whataboutme-ism' is, I'm going to show them this post I saw on threads.

Like I am absolutely sorry that you went through this but hijacking someone's engagement bait post about how people prefer their boiled eggs to talk about your childhood abuse feels like the most out of pocket insanity I've ever seen.

We have stopped knowing how to converse with one another in a normal way.

Also 5 minutes is the superior egg to me.

[redeemablesnake]

Complaining about Threads #2

Somebody pointed this shit out one time and now I get one post per day on my feed about it because people on Threads just farm existing crap over and over again. I’m SURE this was first pointed out on Twitter then just made its way over.

By the way, it’s not even a valid point. People act like hitting Erase Disk immediately does a secure wipe, locks down your computer while it does it, sets the disk on fire, and charges you $80 per megabyte wiped as a data processing fee. The “…” means that it opens a dialogue. You can just hit… cancel. Or whatever. I don’t feel like booting up a Mac to test lol

It also isn’t that weird of a pairing. Both have to do with “removal” of the disk - ejecting is removing it from your computer, erasing is removing the data from the disk. I get that ejecting is more common and it’s just a funny thing to have that next to a total wipe but the more obnoxiously worded instances of this post have been like “REPLY IF YOU THINK APPLE BAD AND GOING TO CAUSE DATA LOSS???”

But OK yeah main point, it wouldn’t bother me as much if people would just stop spamming it

[cookie-nom-nom]

THE LAMB OF GOD???

[separatist-apologist]

Genuinely, and I mean this kindly, but learning to recognize bait and not engaging with it will change your fandom experience.

[wavetapper]

rb this and tag your favourite soundtracks! they can be anything like games or movies or shows or whatever i wanna know what the best ones are 👀

[kurawastaken]

i miss your oracle art :(

There she is!

[bitchfitch]

Wait thats a legitimate question

if youre normal about dog training and not into shock collars as a sex thing but know someone who would buy one for either reason, select that option, I want this as biased and unreliable as possible bc that will be funny. Commit to the bit with me.

this is to get an extremely biased data point about whether more shock collars are being bought for dog behavioral issues, or for people with specific fetishes.

reblog for reach <3

[critical-skeptic]

Do Not Engage With The Bait Directly

Instead, respond to it in broad, general terms. Dissect it, scrutinize it, ridicule it, call it out, or use it to illustrate systemic issues—but never engage with the post or comment directly. Doing so only fuels the orange clown’s omnipresence, which is precisely what he thrives on.

As a veteran and a proud hater of terrorists, dictators, authoritarians, fascists, rapists, traitors, and mobsters, let me make something crystal clear: absolutely nothing that bloated, diarrhea-orange blob of coagulated Cheeto paste masquerading as a "leader" has ever done—or promised to do—has been or ever will be beneficial to me, my fellow veterans, or my brothers and sisters in service. This includes even those too blind, too brainwashed, or too willfully ignorant to see through his paper-thin, jerky-tanned skin or remember the oaths we all took. For those of us who still understand what that oath means, it wasn’t some empty recitation. We swore to protect this country and its Constitution precisely from criminals like him and the terrorist cults that prop him up—"enemies foreign [AND DOMESTIC]." Read that last part slowly if the syllables are too complicated for your Cheeto-cult-addled brain.

No one, absolutely no one, owes you or your propagandist, bootlicking, cultist ilk a shred of gratitude. The audacity—no, the delusional entitlement—of you to demand it is laughable. What people actually owe you is a final nail in the coffin of your regressive, petulant tantrum of a movement, so you and your pathetic lot can fade into the dark, irrelevant corners of history where you’ve always belonged.

You are not supreme. You’re not special. You’re not outsmarting anyone but yourselves, getting duped—over and over again—by a con man who is the literal embodiment of the lowest common denominator. You’re a collective of entitled trolls, too stubborn to accept the reality that your so-called savior isn’t just a failure; he’s your failure. You fell for it. Again. And instead of self-reflection, you double down, dragging the rest of us into your dystopian delusions. In short: take your propaganda and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. The rest of us are too busy fighting for a future untainted by your pitiful need to worship mediocrity wrapped in a spray-tanned con job. The history books won’t be kind to you, and they shouldn’t be.

[larachelledrawsfe]

A very, very late FE anniversary scribble.

[texaschainsawmascara]

[fjordfolk]