>be me
>post a pic of my cat napping on a keyboard
>caption: ‘When your floof takes over the Wi-Fi (and your life) 🐾 #Catproblems’
>some anon slides into my DMs
>‘That’s not a cat. That’s a terrorist operative. They’re training for World Cat Takeover 2026.’
>…excuse me?
>anon tags me in a tweet: “PEOPLES OF THE INTERNET!! This user is HIRING ME TO FAKE A CAT PHOTO. WHOSE TAX DOLLARS ARE WE SPENDING ON THIS FARCE?!”
…
This is a very bad AI-generated attempt of trolling. But it is trolling, isn’t it? And, countless such anons rely on the fact that on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.
And, why on trolls now? Last year, 2025, “rage bait” became the Oxford Word of the Year. In the linked article to read, Oxford calls rage bait as “the internet’s most effective hook” used to stimulate that ever-sensitive feeling of human anger, which concerns our digital well-being?
Your Complex Problem
If you have read this April, 2025 Times of India article where trolls called Elon Musk, a pedophile. The trolls expressed their frustrations, thus, Musk’s gaming stream became a dumpster fire of chaos. Although, it garnered 2 million + views on X.
In May 2025, an India Today report, where you will read that trolls turned their rage towards a victim of a terrorist attack, who appealed for peace?
Then came The Telegraph article where you’ll read that the trolls, “baying for blood”, accussed government administrators of treason, for cessation of hostilities?
To which, if you read this The Hindu article, it mentions social media platforms “being regularly used for hate speech, abusive comments, and deliberate distortion of facts” and trolls targeting people groups. The article calls for a “stringent anti-troll law must be in place to stop acute mental and physical harrasement trolls can cause.”
And, within the same month, as Manila Standard reports, you will read that the U.S. House of Representatives appointed its first spokesperson to counter disinformation and trolls.
From the above evidences, it seems that trolls are behind creating a rage-filled atmosphere to “rage bait” anyone that might cause their acute harrasement, concerning digital welfare.
But when we scratch the surface of this behavior from the trolls, we find out a cocktail of personality traits, which a 2023 NIH research paper calls the Dark Tetrad. If you go through this NIH research paper, the definition of online trolling is as follows:
- “starts and/or exacerbates disruptive conflict online for their amusement”
- “is often deceptive, as they tend to have second social media accounts used for trolling”
- “is tactically aggressive to increase emotional responses”
- “disturbs regular discussions on online platforms to seek attention”
From the above definition, it clearly states that online trolling or trolls, with deceptive online identities, lead to an online conflict like #Gamergate, that flares up emotional responses like anger, and poison the ongoing discussion, to seek attention. If you were rage baited ever, it’s 100% that it was a deception to flare up your rage or emotional response. Some people might do this on purpose, which might be out of boredom or for fun.
But, watch the below YouTube video by ill318, where governments start employing internet trolls to ‘correct misinformation’…
You should also watch this video by Question Everything channel , where fake online personas, bots, being created to spy within online groups (which can be used to troll the group discussion)…
And, this method is called ‘cognitive infiltration’, that you should watch in the following video by Luke Rudkowski from WeAreChange…
And, even more creepy and scary revelations by Russia Today in this archived (now deleted YouTube video). Watch it till the end, to understand how the social media is harnessed to manipulate online behavior.
And not just the government, but also big agrochemical and biotech corporations like Monsanto do the same, which you will read in this article by The Global Research. Here, Monsanto had received critical negative online comments, for concealing potential risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma from its product Roundup. In response to the negative online comments, Monsanto started employing people who commented positive feedback for the corporation, defending Monsanto, and it’s products.
You can easily lead to the conclusion that other than some people on the internet, there is a great chance that most of the trolling is done through government agencies and big corporations. But wait, there’s another player to it.
A recent article by TechRadarPro cites the 2025 Imperva Bad Bot Report, which says that in 2024, 51% of all the internet traffic was from bots. These bots using generative AI, can be used for malicious activity, like AI-enabled attacks. Thus, 2024, became the sixth consecutive year in growth of bad bot activity.
Six years, which means bad bot activites started around 2018. Thus, flooding the social media platform with identically worded propaganda posts, can easily be the credited to bad bot activity.
Your Simple Solution
So, next time, if you get flack for posting something that doesn’t toe the line of the zeitgeist, and the flack is for you to further involve in the poisoned discussion to express your rage, be 100% sure it’s a malicious bot-activity, posing as human beings, set up by either covert government operation or by some big business giant or even both, to manipulate the online discussion towards a certain propaganda goal.
Therefore, you must know these techniques by reading this 2012 detailed article on The Gentleperson’s Guide To Forum Spies. So, whenever, your social media post gets unusual flack from accounts you don’t even know they exist, make sure you tick the checklist from the gentleperson’s guide.
And, I will highly suggest that you watch this video titled A Gentleman’s Guide to Trolls, Bots, Sealions, Forum Spies and Other Pests – #SolutionsWatch by James Corbett of the CorbettReport.com, on how to tactfully use the above mentioned guide.
So, you must always remember, that at the end of the day, the malicious trolls weaponize language, i.e. the language of sighs and tears to insinuate emotions. Just what Nicholas Bonneville suggested during the French Revolution. I have already written upon this with a historical context, so check this out.
But, the best solution for you is to leave the big-tech social media for good, and create your own web platforms. Just exactly what Luke Smith suggests, which is why you can see this article, but can never comment on it. Watch the following video till the end.