[aspenmayer]

> So much so, its now referred to as "rage bait" where Only Fans women purposely post content that gets men to engage with their posts in order to make more money.

Did you intentionally call “thirst traps” “rage bait” erroneously so that someone would correct you? Engagement bait works surprisingly well on HN, I just wasn’t sure if that was an ironic wink at the audience.

[burningChrome]

I've seen them referred to with both terms. At first I believe they were "thirst traps" where women would post pics of them with skimpy, revealing clothes and ask questions to get men to engage like, "My new see-through top, what do you think?" and at some point, it seems like men would just skip through these, realizing what they were trying to do.

Now, you see posts from women leaning up against say a Ferrari saying, "Thank you to all 2,000 men who helped buy this Porsche for me!" which is what I refer to now as "rage bait" where people flood the comments talking about how stupid the person is that they don't even know the difference between a Porsche and a Ferrari. And then you get all the other comments about "Your father must be so proud" comments. All the while, the account is making money by getting people to engage in her content that she purposefully posts to get people going in order to drive engagement.

So I think it started out as "thirst trap" and has since migrated to "rage bait" because the former wasn't working well enough.

[aspenmayer]

That tracks with my observations. I think they’re combining some “pay pig” kinks with rage bait/troll bait posts for maximum positive/negative feedback. Now that X and TikTok have pay-for-engagement schemes for users, this kind of content has become endemic to those platforms.

[dragonwriter]

> Did you intentionally call “thirst traps” “rage bait” erroneously so that someone would correct you?

Misogyny and slut shaming in particular are so common on social media that thirst traps also function as rage bait, and the more transparent content creators are quite open about the fact that they often benefit quite a bit from the hostile response/QRTs (not just in terms of engagement on the regular social platform they are posted on, but in terms of direct boost to subscriptions on their pay sites traceable to the degree of hostile engagement.)

This isn't surprising, the negative responses are often from the same people complaining about, and with networks of followers expressing concern about, porn addiction, a behavior that correlates positively with both "being a conservative Christian" (probably not helpful on its own) and "being an active porn consumer" (bingo!), so the hostile engagement tends to also serve as promotion of the content within a set of social media users that is unlikely to be current followers but is likely to be interested in the service being promoted (even if they show public disdain for it.)

[aspenmayer]

I notice how certain content or phrasing acts as shibboleths for affinity groups, with your reaction to the stimulus itself being the gatekeeping test by proxy. Like, if you take the bait, I know you’re a tourist, because regulars know that it’s bait for newbies. There are interesting interactions at play between insiders in these threads, as many normal users seem unable to understand that they’re interacting with promotional content, regardless of whether there’s a real person on the other end.