While clickbaiting promises something alluring to get people to click on something and then pull a bait and switch, rage-baiting is the opposite. It encourages people to engage or “click” by presenting something so outrageous or anger-inducing that the person views the material in order to vent his anger at it.
This happens with online Catholics when they post content to enrage Protestants, or just don’t consider how they’ll receive the message. Consider this post: “Every single smart Protestant becomes Catholic eventually. No exceptions.”
You can tell this approach is bad just by following the Golden Rule: Treat others how you want to be treated. Would a Catholic be moved toward Protestantism by someone simply saying, “Every smart Catholic becomes Protestant, without exception”? Or would a Christian think that maybe atheists have a point just because some meme says, “Every smart Christian leaves the Faith, without exception”? Or would they just roll their eyes at an indirect insult to their intelligence?
Putting down people who disagree with us isn’t a great way to reach them. Colossians 4:5-6 says, “Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one.”
But along with inducing rage by putting down Protestants, some Catholics induce rage by trying to be as over-the-top as they can with their Catholicism in order make Protestants seethe. One way this happens is by playfully talking about Mary and the saints in a way that borders on idolatry. This can even happen when well-meaning Catholics present memes about Mary or the saints with extremely lofty praise that a Protestant misunderstands to be illicit worship.
Now, I get that sometimes Catholics have been too conciliatory toward Protestantism and acted as though we have to apologize for our Catholic heritage or piety. But we also have to remember St. Paul’s principle of “milk before meat.” He writes in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, “I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh.”
This means you shouldn’t give someone spiritual food he isn’t ready to digest. For example, you wouldn’t start an Evangelical who can barely wrap his head around Mary being the mother of God with St. Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary. Without a proper grounding in Catholic theology, a brand-new convert may be scandalized by its effusive praise of Mary.
De Montfort is clear regarding Mary . . .
With the whole Church I acknowledge that Mary, being a mere creature fashioned by the hands of God is, compared to his infinite majesty, less than an atom, or rather is simply nothing, since he alone can say, “I am he who is.” Consequently, this great Lord, who is ever independent and self-sufficient, never had and does not now have any absolute need of the Blessed Virgin for the accomplishment of his will and the manifestation of his glory. To do all things he has only to will them” (True Devotion, 7).
. . . but the point is that traditions and practices that can seem shocking to outsiders should be presented to them gently and didactically, not abrasively and with an intent simply to shock or own them. And we also shouldn’t act as though certain optional practices, like saying a daily rosary or attending daily Mass, are mandatory parts of the Faith.
Ultimately, I think the obnoxious stuff Catholics do online is similar to the obnoxious stuff other people do online because social media cause us to act inhuman to one another. It’s built into the algorithm, and it takes a lot to break free from it.
In fact, one of the dangers of social media is that we think that if we have a “hot take,” then we need to broadcast that to the world because we crave the dopamine our brain releases when people like our posts. But that’s what friends and family are for. Traditionally, they are the people we can share our thoughts with and who, if we have a bad take, can graciously correct us without our error becoming something that lives on the internet forever.
When online anonymous accounts replace these healthy relationships, people can spiral into trying to say the most extreme thing their anonymous peers will cheerlead, even though this isn’t a brave act at all.
Being a public profile isn’t a guarantee that you will be a virtuous person. There are many public accounts that traffic in garbage. But maybe that’s a reason we all should be backing away from social media—or, if we do use social media to share our faith, we should treat it as a solemn mission and not a place to shoot from the hip.
The following excerpt from the Vatican’s 2023 document “Towards Full Presence” provides a good attitude for us to adopt:
The use of the social web is complementary to an encounter in the flesh that comes alive through the body, heart, eyes, gaze, and breath of the other. If the Net is used as an extension or expectation of such an encounter, then the network concept is not betrayed and remains a resource for communion. . . .
The digital world can be an environment rich in humanity; “a network not of wires but of people,” if we remember that on the other side of the screen there are no “numbers” or mere “aggregates of individuals,” but people who have stories, dreams, expectations, sufferings. There is a name and a face.