u/CorndogQueen420

I’ve always had an intense distain for the distinctly 4chan brand of rage baiter nihilism, which has escaped containment and completely infected the right wing in America. The “I win if I can make myself shitty and annoying enough to get your attention/trigger you” mindset, with no other goals.

The smugness and unjustified gleefulness they have around successfully irritating people always felt ridiculous to me, because rage baiting is fundamentally easy. So easy that babies do it instinctively.

Newborn babies and very young children mostly try to get attention by making themselves too annoying to ignore. We all start life as rage baiters. Screaming, crying, tantrums, annoying behavior, all very easy and reliable ways to get attention, albeit mostly negative attention. It’s not necessarily intentional, it’s just all we know how to do at that stage. We’ve learned that it works and it’s quick, even though it’s exhausting and irritating for everyone around us.

Rage baiters never grew past that stage, because they aren’t capable of getting enough positive attention via hobbies, skills, good personality, and other things that most people would consider to be positive character or skill traits.

To most people “winning” involves accomplishing, or at least trying to accomplish/do something worthy of the relatively more rare positive attention. To rage baiters, winning involves debasing themselves for easy negative attention.

It’s loser behavior.

If they don’t get attention, they’ve debased themselves for nothing. If they DO get attention and “win”, they’ve debased themselves for the least gratifying and least fulfilling form of attention possible, and reinforced their own shitty behavior. And that’s setting aside how sad it is to frame getting negative attention as a victory, as if achieving on par with an infant is an accomplishment.

The next time somebody tries to act like they’re playing 4D chess when they’re ignorant or annoying enough to irritate you, know that they’ve already lost an inherently losing game- whether you engage with them or not.

/endramble 😂