We discuss taxes on income, taxes on commodities, taxes on property. But there is a hidden tax that strikes people who have less money and less time much harder than people who have more. I call it the attention tax. And rage bait is how it gets collected.
If you are rich, then you can pay for calm. You can pay for privacy. And you can hire people who can clean your information. You can live in quiet places and choose what comes to your mind. But if you are a normal person you are using free platforms. Free social media. Free news. Free entertainment. And "free" means that you are paying with something else. You are paying with your attention and your emotions. The business model is simple, make you angry, get you to stay on the page, show you ads, repeat. The more they annoy you, the more money they make.
Oxford recently named "rage bait" as the word of 2025. Platforms are now paying creators depending on how many emotional replies they receive. Anger brings about the most replies. So the whole content economy is designed to make you feel bad. And who suffers most? People who cannot afford to get away. People who use the free apps because they cannot afford to pay for premium quiet. People who are already stressed out by money and now have their dwindling mental energy sucked out by outrage content. Then they make worse decisions. They impulse buy. They remain in bad jobs because they are too tired to think about change. They do not get new skills because their brain is exhausted fighting with strangers online.
I am in no way blaming anyone for using these platforms. I use them too. But I began to think of it as a cost. Every hour that I spend being angry is one less hour that I'm working on building something. Every night because of stress on the Internet - I sleep badly, a day I show up weaker at work. The system is made to steal from people who already have less. Not their money directly. Their time. Their focus. Their peace. And those things turn to money at some point. I do not have a perfect solution. But I think the first step is getting a clear view of it. Rage bait is not simply annoying content. It is a redistribution of wealth from people unable to afford calm to people who sell chaos. Once I saw it that way, I went about protecting my attention like protecting my wallet. Maybe that is a good place to start?
