The rage bait is getting ugly
Can we just go back to talking about how ice cream is bad, actually?
CW: animal abuse
The internet is dying.
I don’t think it’ll die completely, because we’ve become too dependent on it for simple everyday tasks. No one wants to return to going to a bank to deposit a check, or picking up a phone to order a pizza. It’s made life too easy, and we won’t go back.
I mean the socialization and free-range journalism aspects of it. You know, what made it interesting at one time, maybe a few years ago. I’m deeply fascinated by the “dead internet” theory suggesting that much of what you see online these days, even seemingly posted by actual human beings, is really AI-generated content, designed to either farm for engagement, or spread propaganda. But I’m also fascinated (and deeply disheartened) by how much of the internet is literally dead, as in a graveyard of abandoned websites that once had a robust readership, but have since had to rely on intrusive, questionably legitimate ads to generate even just a drop of revenue to keep the servers running.
It’s long been a circular issue: as it became more expensive to keep websites with high readership running, they began to rely on paywalls and subscription tiers to cover the costs. Readers, in turn, complained about having to pay for what had previously been free, and either stopped visiting the sites or used workarounds to continue reading articles without paying for them. When “ask people to pay for it” didn’t translate to “$ $ $ $" then sites pivoted over to becoming little more than delivery devices for some of the sketchiest looking “advertising” possible, usually consisting of alarmist headlines like A CARDIOLOGIST IS BEGGING AMERICANS TO STOP EATING THIS ONE FOOD, and very likely resulting in a computer virus if you clicked on them.
Understandably, readers didn’t like that either, and websites had to rely on even more sketchy-looking advertising, to the point where even BuzzFeed, arguably once one of the most popular websites in the world, with daily site traffic numbers in the millions, is now nearly unusable. They’re still bleeding readers, and there doesn’t seem to be any clear path to returning to where any of these sites once were without a real human (and not a corporation) pouring money into it. This is what is currently happening with The Onion and its sister entertainment site The A.V. Club, but it remains to be seen how well it will work out in the long run. If anybody behind it has the same mindset as one Elon Musk, it won’t.
Even more disheartening than sites that have had to rely on ugly, pushy advertising that brings browser speeds to a dead standstill are those that have had to resort to either A.I. generated content (because they can’t afford actual writers anymore), or, even worse, rage bait. Now, I know rage bait isn’t new. Slate, once a leading voice in political reporting, was also a pioneer in running articles that were written specifically to be read and passed around in “look at this asshole” irritation. It may have even established the basic formula: air a grievance about an innocuous thing, such as pie or outdoor movie screenings1, in as smug and condescending a manner as possible. Click submit, and then just sit back and wait for those sweet anger clicks to start rolling in.
But as desperation to make more money to meet rising costs set in, the rage bait got more clumsy and obvious. Collider, a purported entertainment website, ran an article last Christmas that posited that It’s a Wonderful Life is “darker than you remember,” as if suggesting that the average viewer has overlooked the fact that the entire movie is about a man who is talked out of committing suicide. 75% of the article just recounts the plot (including that Mr. Potter “represents the evils of capitalism,” in case you didn’t catch that), while the remaining 25% snidely criticizes a non-existent viewer who just thinks it’s a warm holiday classic with a happy ending.
Unsurprisingly, it ended up one of Collider’s most-read articles, with much of its traffic generated on social media from outraged people who did, in fact, get that Mr. Potter represents the evils of capitalism. We all fell for it, and Collider was probably able to afford an end-of-year pizza party for its staff (though probably just Papa John’s, not the good shit).
What I hope might be the nadir of rage baiting (though I know it won’t be) happened just recently at The Cut, one of the websites under the umbrella of New York magazine, along with entertainment site Vulture, and foodie site Grub Street. The Cut is its fashion and lifestyle site, and like New York itself, reads as knowingly pretentious and out of touch. That’s kind of its brand, as evidenced by a recent article titled “The 8 People You Meet at Every Fashion Week Party.”
The Cut is best known for its “Sex Diaries” feature, which has been running for over a decade. It consists of what are purported to be anonymous autobiographical essays about the kinky, often promiscuous sex lives of some of the worst people you’ve ever encountered, with such headlines as “The Woman Sneaking Out of Work to Have an Affair” and “The Polyamorous Farmer Looking for Lovers in the Off-Season.” The column’s intention is to shock, titillate, and make the reader ask him or herself “Why aren’t I out there chasing a lover to the Hamptons, or juggling five boyfriends at once?” Unsurprisingly, it’s by far The Cut’s most-read column, with the comment section mostly devoted to people doubting the veracity of the essays, or mocking their HBO “sad rich people in loveless affairs” prestige drama tone.
So it’s surprising that this low point in rage bait was not a Sex Diaries essay, but rather part of a series of articles on the ethics of pet ownership. Most of the articles posed questions that had no easy answer, such as whether or not it was cruel to keep a cat indoors, if we force sick and/or elderly pets to live too long, or if we should even be “owning” pets at all. None of it was light reading, but the real showstopper was a personal essay from “Anonymous” titled “Why Did I Stop Loving My Cat When I Had a Baby?”
This turned out to be a rare instance in which the title actually undersold the article. One expected perhaps a poignant story about someone becoming a parent and no longer being able to dedicate their full time and attention to a pet. It happens, and sometimes the pet acts out in a way that can be frustrating for the entire family. Maybe it would end with things looking better, or a painful decision, like having to rehome the cat to someone who can be a more involved caretaker.
This was not what that essay was about.
I shan’t link to it, not just because it would make me hypocritical as far as the point of this newsletter is concerned, but because it is fucking horrifying. The fact that there isn’t a content warning at the top is one of several mistakes The Cut made in running the essay (the first being running it at all). Rather than a bittersweet story about having to prioritize a human baby over a fur baby, it’s a chilling account of a woman who, following the birth of her child, began willfully neglecting her pet cat and wishing death upon it, even setting up opportunities for it to either run away or kill itself.
It’s hard to tell what causes more goosebumps, the writer indifferently rattling off the numerous ways she mistreated her cat (which had lived with her for more than a decade before her child was born), including letting it go without water for so long that it ended up drinking from a toilet, or that it ends with her not giving the cat up, as a rational-minded person would do, but simply hoping that she’ll go back to caring about it at some point. Let’s also not overlook that the thrust of the essay seems to suggest that neglecting and mistreating pets is normal for new parents, as noted by the writer supposedly bonding with her friends over their own stories about suddenly regretting the existence of their pets, or telling them out loud that they wished they’d die.
I don’t know many pet-having persons for whom the introduction of a baby didn’t cause a plummeting of interest in the legacy mammal. In some cases, this disillusionment is temporary, in others permanent. Cats, being standoffish in nature, tend to be grievously neglected; dogs, having nonnegotiable daily needs, are more often resented.
We use “citation needed” to mock people who post stuff about Haitian immigrants eating cats, but this really is one instance in which I need this person to show actual evidence that it’s common for cats to be “grievously neglected” following the birth of a child. It’s also puzzling that the writer at no point mentions her child’s father, except to say that her cat didn’t like him at the beginning of the relationship. Did the cat dislike him so much that he couldn’t put some wet food in a bowl twice a day, or empty out the cat’s litter box a couple times a week? Cats can be assholes, yes, but generally speaking they’ll leave you alone if you give them something they want or need. You know, like food, or a clean place to shit.
It’s wild to read a personal essay at a lifestyle website and think “Is this person mentally ill?” The Cut wanted to discuss the ethics of pet ownership, how about the ethics of running this essay? If it’s real, how many people on The Cut’s editorial staff (assuming there’s even more than one person) looked at it and didn’t think to file a report with the ASPCA? An editorial note at the top of the essay reported that the cat is “healthy and taken care of,” but what does that mean? Is it still in the essay writer’s care? Did she suddenly snap out of whatever psychotic break she was in and go back to treating the cat like it’s a living creature with needs, instead of a target for her frustration and dissatisfaction with her life?
What does it mean when you say you “don’t condone harm to animals” but run an essay about someone unapologetically leaving a window open in their apartment in the hope that her cat falls to its death?
But, you know, they got what they wanted. The essay has been the most-read article at The Cut for a couple of weeks now, bested only by the daily horoscope. Even “Sex Diaries” never got that kind of numbers. The comment section of every post on The Cut’s Facebook and Threads pages recently is fully devoted to both the story, and demands for #justiceforlucky (the cat’s name is Lucky). So, people are talking about it. People are passing it around. Editor David Haskell even got to pull a victim card, when, after being confronted with an unsurprising amount of pushback from appalled readers, he put out a statement noting that harassment of his staff would not be tolerated, while reiterating that the Lucky was safe (but not elaborating on what that meant).
But you know that some nasty emails are worth that spike in traffic, and, of course, that increased ad revenue. I’m even cynical enough to believe that, considering they didn’t pull the article, the editor’s statement was mostly to take a second bite of the apple, and get even more site traffic. Because we can’t look away from these things, can we? I know that some of you reading this are going to look for the essay and read it yourself. I would too. It’s just the way we are, it’s near-impossible to resist the urge to look at this asshole, or that asshole, or this other asshole over here. It’s why, even after Trump loses another election (God willing), the media will still cover whatever idiotic word salad he posts online or says in an interview, because we’ll keep looking.
But it scares me because what’s next? If giving a platform to an unapologetic animal abuser gets millions of eyes on a website, who’s going to try to top that, and how will they do it? Maybe an essay on why date rape isn’t so bad, actually? “My Teenage Daughter Ran Away and I Don’t Miss Her”? “I Drugged a Homeless Man and Stole His Kidney”? When will we reach the bottom? But that’s the problem, there is no bottom, not as long as these sites keep hemorrhaging money, and we keep refusing to ignore the lure of righteous indignation.
Both of these are real examples, which I will not link to because that would make me a hypocrite.