When ignoring is the best response
At the end of every year, the Oxford University Press shortlists different words that represent and capture the prevailing mood and discussions of the past 12 months. These terms are then put into a public vote, with the results of the poll guiding the final decision taken by OUP’s language experts. When rage-baiting—a term referring to online content designed to provoke anger or outrage to promote engagement—was chosen, it illustrated more than just the increasingly hostile nature of online posts, but also how deeply this kind of hostility has been normalized.
Many Filipinos appear to be easy targets for rage-baiting. Last October, a TikTok user demonstrated just how effortless this manipulation can be. She posted a deliberately absurd statement: “The Philippines is the easiest continent to rage bait,” which then triggered waves of angry responses. She later uploaded a follow-up video compiling all the comments from angry users who failed to see that the joke was not the insult itself, but how fast it worked in generating traction and reactions.
Instead of provoking anger, some foreign creators engage in Pinoy baiting, where they use superficial flattery, like using a few Tagalog phrases or staging exaggerated reactions to Filipino food. While the emotional lever here is pride and validation instead of rage, the mechanism is the same. The cultural references contained in these posts are rarely substantive and are just being used as algorithmic fuel for higher views, likes, and shares from Filipino users.
Filipinos spend nearly three times the global average on social media, with platforms like Facebook and TikTok serving not just as entertainment hubs but also as primary news sources. The heavy exposure to emotionally charged content pushed by these platforms, combined with a disinclination to exert additional effort on fact-checking, increases Filipino users’ susceptibility to manipulative framing.
Much has already been said about the importance of strengthening critical thinking and media literacy in schools. To effectively navigate clickbait and rage-bait, however, psychological research points to another important competence: critical ignoring. Experts define critical ignoring as the skill to resist low-quality and misleading information despite how “cognitively attractive” they may seem, and as being more selective about where to invest one’s limited attention span. Put simply, digital discernment is not only about what we analyze but also about what we deliberately choose not to engage with.
A 2022 research published by the Association for Psychological Science identified three core strategies that make up critical ignoring skills: self-nudging, lateral reading, and do-not-feed-the-trolls.
Self-nudging is the choice people make to take control of their digital environment, particularly the kind of content they see on their social media feeds, as well as to regulate how they access their digital devices. Instead of just relying on discipline and self-control, those who practice self-nudging find ways to take out the temptation altogether. Some people, for example, may self-nudge by removing access to Facebook and TikTok on their phone or by installing applications that set time limits on their usage.
Lateral reading refers to the skill and commitment to verify the credibility of the posts we see by searching the web to check what other, more formal sources, like newspapers and journal articles, have to say about the topic. The discipline of conducting lateral reading skills needs to be explicitly taught, especially for users who tend to assume a post is credible simply because it was shared by a friend or it appears frequently on their feed.
Lastly, the “do-not-feed-the-trolls” strategy simply means that users should not respond directly to trolling by debating with them. Instead, it encourages just blocking and reporting trolls. However, this approach is only effective for online platforms that have an effective mechanism for content moderation. Due to a lack of timely review and intervention on some social media platforms, users are often left conflicted about whether it is more prudent to engage to help debunk false and misleading information, or to ignore it and risk allowing harmful information to circulate largely unchecked.
Lessons on media literacy must place a stronger focus on attention literacy. Every online user must be able to (1) understand that attention is a finite and valuable resource, (2) recognize when platforms are manipulating one’s emotions rather than informing judgment, and (3) willingly set boundaries and disengage, even if it means being less in-the-know about certain internet trends. Rage-baiting is an effective tactic because of the people who cannot resist responding to it. We need to be conscious, then, that there are times when the most effective defense is not a rebuttal but a deliberate choice to critically ignore it.
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eleanor@shetalksasia.com
