The best defense is, of course, a strategic offense.

Let’s talk reverse psychology, sociology, and rage-bait in the context of activism, shall we?

A lot of unhealed people out there love to hate; this is actually where they become their most weak and impressionable, though.

So, I’m gonna talk to you about how we can get more eyes on the topics that matter to you, and that could potentially change some minds in the process.

First things first, you must have a purpose.

My purpose is to fight for transgender human and civil rights.

I’m gonna show you how I use the hate of others to further attract and alter the minds of the Internet’s hateful occupants with time on their hands to learn a few new life lessons. That is, the ones who have a healthy enough attention span to complete reading an article, of course.

Steps To Creating Rage-Bait Activism Long-Format Content

It’s not at all a hard formula to put together, as you will see:

1. Decide on the purpose you want to advocate for.
2. Draft your article reflecting exactly what you are seeking to have people learn from the angle at which you are seeking to advocate for.
3. Draft your article headline to entice people with an opposing mindset.

Example:

75 Negative Aspects of Being Transgender From My Lived Experience

Now you might be asking, Dylan, why in the hell would you, as a gay transgender man who loves being trans, draft an article like this? Your answer is because Internet trolls and transphobes aren’t the smartest of humans; they are rather easy to lead in a direction when they think that their hateful viewpoints are being directly spoken to and supported.

That is obviously so apparent, as most transphobes align with being Trump supporters, so it’s easy to manipulate people at that level of intelligence into clicking on anything they think aligns with their own hate because they often feel the need to assert that they are “right” on nearly every topic.

So the tactic here is to trick them into reading your opposing viewpoint through their own hate and ignorance.

So, go ahead and read that article: 75 Negative Aspects of Being Transgender From My Lived Experiencebefore you proceed reading further; after reading that article, you’ll understand exactly why and how rage-bait in terms of activism functions as you will see within that article that the only negative aspects of my being transgender are how the world receives some like myself, not how I view someone like myself. It depicts how ongoing inhumane treatment from others is actually the only negative aspect surrounding my trans identity, not my identity itself.

So, now that you’ve read that article and are more familiar, let’s get back to business:

4. After you’ve created your title, become hyper-thorough when optimizing your article in terms of both on- and off-page SEO. Utilize keywords that, again, are rage bait in the sense that they appear to be highly searched terminology regarding the affirmation of the opposing viewpoint to that of which your article topic is.

5. Before publishing, review all angles of your article from the mindset of the most vile opposition and think: did I hit all of the low-hanging fruit in terms of how to draw someone of that hateful mindset into my article through the title? When you are confident you have achieved this, hit publish and promote widely within your network.

You’ll see an influx of web traffic; that’s for certain. Rage-bait, you see, is most often something no one sees coming and that people are just dying to click on because they can’t control their extreme draw to their own hateful emotions, often to which they don’t even fully understand why they have them to begin with. So that’s the weak point I referenced in the beginning of this article, you may recall. The weakness here is not fully being self-aware of their emotions; a weak person confused about their own viewpoints of identity is a person who will linger longer to read on a topic because they will have a hard time separating themselves when they start to read the words of the article highlighting and supporting their opposing viewpoints with human interest stories and facts. When personal shame is felt, and the article topic is centered upon identity, people do become rather conflicted and are then forced to self-reflect on the origin of their own hate.

People who click to read articles that appear to support their own hateful viewpoints upon reading the first few sentences of your article will slowly realize they’re not reading an article that supports their hateful views and that possibly they should consider how mean of an individual they truly are.

Self-reflection can take several forms in this scenario.

Here’s What Happens Next

• Some stay to read the entire article and consider it.
• Some stay to read the entire article, consider it, and become vocal about their new considerations (this is not as common, but it does happen; I have been told I have changed people’s minds).
• Some stay to read the entire article and are angry.
• Some stay to read the entire article and, becoming angry, become vocal.
• Some stay to read the entire article, and it does not move them.
• Some stay to read the entire article, and it shines a light on their hatred and brings them to tears.
• Some leave because they feel duped.
• Some leave because they feel confused.
• Some people read the entire article and become more understanding.
• Everyone learns.

You Can’t Maximize What You Can’t Measure

Become one with your analytics reporting, and you will learn a lot about where the world is with online human behavior as it pertains to your activism.

For example, below you will see which topics I write about that receive the most web traffic.

Hint: It’s always something referring to the suffering, oppression, and violence directed towards transgender people that receives the most traffic.

Rarely, when I am writing about trans joy and/or a community accomplishment, do my web metrics reflect as much human interest in terms of traffic as do my articles about negative aspects affecting my community. That tells me there’s so much work to be done.

With that said, we as transgender activists can and are using reverse rage-bait to meet transphobes at the ignorant level at which they function by attracting them to read articles that they think will support their transphobia, and upon reading later learn that the angle of the article dispels everything they’ve ever told themselves about why they hate transgender people.

Rage-bait long-form content creation is one of many tactics activists may use in our advocacy efforts.

Keep writing, keep speaking, and keep being, and maybe one day you will help change a few minds as well.