By: Andika Pratama

In the digital world, we often witness heated arguments between strangers over a wide range of topics, including politics, personal interests and hobbies, and religion. Consider, for example, a post that reads, “Young people nowadays have no manners.” Within minutes, the replies fill up with negative comments and insults, which are then met with even harsher insults. We see this so often that many people have come to regard it as normal, as though this is simply how the internet works.

In essence, this perception is not entirely wrong, but it deserves and needs to be reconsidered. In sociolinguistics, language is always used within particular social relationships. This means that every word we type on social media remains bound by social norms, relationships between speakers, and context. Comment sections may feel like spaces with few restrictions, but the norms of politeness do not simply disappear because the other person is out of sight. Therefore, understanding ragebait and toxic comments also means understanding how linguistic ethics are tested in digital spaces.

Language Ethics and the Face We Need to Protect

Language ethics are closely related to the concept of face, which refers to the self-image that every individual wants others to respect during an interaction. Every speaker wants to be accepted while also maintaining freedom from coercion. As a result, speech acts such as criticism or commands may threaten the other person's face. To address this, speakers generally employ politeness strategies, such as using respectful forms of address, engaging in small talk, or softening criticism. These unwritten conventions form the foundation of language ethics, both in face-to-face interactions and on mobile screens.

Impoliteness occurs in the opposite situation, namely when a person's way of speaking conflicts with expectations, desires, and beliefs about what constitutes appropriate behavior in a particular social situation. The degree to which someone feels offended depends on the emotional sensitivity of those expectations and on expressions conventionally regarded as hurtful, such as insults intensified by emphatic words. This is why ethical judgments about an utterance always depend on context. Teasing between close friends may be interpreted as a sign of familiarity, whereas the same sentence may feel insulting when posted by a stranger in a comment section. Therefore, standards of politeness on social media must be understood in relation to the relationship between speakers and the norms of the community in which the utterance appears.

Ragebait and Toxic Comments: Why Does Anger Spread So Easily?

Ragebait is content deliberately designed to provoke audience anger in order to generate as many comments, shares, and as much attention as possible. Its first characteristic is a provocative and overgeneralized headline or opening statement, such as “Motorcyclists are always selfish on the road.” Second, information is presented selectively, stripping it of its original context. Third, the content touches on sensitive identities or issues, such as religion, politics, or gender, and often includes absolute terms such as always, everyone, and never. The goal is to trigger an immediate reaction, so factual accuracy is often pushed aside. Readers who respond impulsively are, in fact, doing exactly what the content creator intended.

This strategy is effective because moral emotions can spread easily from person to person. Research has also shown that moral and political ideas spread more rapidly through expressions of moral emotion, a process known as moral contagion. This is a psychological and social phenomenon in which a person's or group's values, emotions, or moral outlook can spread to other people or entities in their surroundings. Each additional word carrying moral-emotional meaning increases the spread of a message by approximately 20%, particularly among like-minded groups. When a post targets or vilifies another party, users may feel compelled to defend their own group through comments that are equally emotional. This pattern resembles trolling, an antagonistic behavior in which someone deliberately provokes conflict while appearing sincere. Ragebait provocation is also frequently packaged as an ordinary opinion or news item.

Toxic comments are online utterances that insult, demean, threaten, or personally attack another person without addressing the substance of the issue. Their characteristics include profanity, hurtful sarcasm, mockery of someone's physical appearance or background, and excessive capitalization intended to imitate shouting. Such remarks are visible to a large audience and remain stored online, allowing them to be read again at any time. Consequently, the damage inflicted on the other person's face can last much longer than an insult exchanged in a private, face-to-face conversation.

Why, then, can people who are polite in real life become rude when typing online? The answer lies in a phenomenon known as the online disinhibition effect, a psychological phenomenon in which individuals tend to lose some degree of self-control, moral restraint, or behavioral inhibition when communicating online compared with interacting directly in person. This effect has a benign side; for example, people may become more willing to share their feelings openly. However, its toxic side emerges when the absence of the other person's visible face makes the impact of threatening that person's face seem less real.

This understanding can be put into practice. Many social media posts are created purely to provoke arguments and controversy through ragebaiting. As critical internet users, we need to understand the full context, identify the sources, and consider who benefits from the resulting controversy. Before posting a comment, ask yourself whether you would be willing to say the same words directly to the person concerned. Firm criticism remains legitimate as long as it targets ideas, while personal attacks should be avoided. In this way, freedom of expression and respect for other people's face can coexist.

References:

Brady, W. J., Wills, J. A., Jost, J. T., Tucker, J. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2017). Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(28), 7313–7318. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1618923114

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813085

Culpeper, J. (2011). Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975752

Hardaker, C. (2010). Trolling in asynchronous computer-mediated communication: From user discussions to academic definitions. Journal of Politeness Research, 6(2), 215–242. https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2010.011

Suler, J. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7(3), 321–326. https://doi.org/10.1089/1094931041291295