Newest Online Trend Has People Rage-Baiting Their Cats For Laughs

It pays to make people angry.

Rage-baiting has existed as long as the internet has been a thing, but thanks to algorithmically-ruled social media, eliciting clicks through anger has become incentivized and normalized.

Monetized Facebook groups use rage-bait to drive engagement. Advertisers use it to break through the noise with carefully calibrated taunts: “Taylor Swift has an IQ of 165. Think you can beat her in this online test?” Unscrupulous online “news” platforms use it to keep readers in perpetual doomscrolling loops, which is easy to do in a politically charged environment.

But rage-baiting cats? Why would anyone do that?

Apparently some people think it’s funny, and the practice seems to have originated where all of our society’s most brilliant ideas are spawned: on TikTok, that virtual salon where towering intellects advance the causes of humanity.

Of course you can’t bait a cat with politics or culture wars, so the videos of feline rage-baiting compilations demonstrate trolling of a more physical nature: pulling tails, aggressively petting when it’s not wanted, poking cats in their tummies, picking them up and taking an agonizingly long time to place them back on the ground.

If it annoys a feline and provokes a reaction, it’s on the table.

Rage-baiting is just another way to say they’re making their cats extremely frustrated to get a rise out of them.

When the cat reacts, that’s supposed to be the funny bit.

It’s not funny. Rage-baiting your cats, in honest terms, means doing things that make them deeply uncomfortable in their own homes where they’re supposed to feel safe. Arguably worse, the perpetrators are their humans, with whom they’re supposed to feel protected and loved.

As feline behavior consultant Julia Specht of Park Slope Paws told Upworthy, our furry friends are not in on the joke, they’re the butt of it.

“Cats can’t know what your intention is; they’re not capable of that tertiary-level thought,” Specht said. “All they know is that you’re doing something unpleasant that they don’t like.”

I’m not going for virtue signaling points when I say it’s a profound betrayal. I cannot fathom intentionally making my cat feel uncomfortable or frustrating him, let alone to do so motivated by potential attention from online strangers.

Your cat is supposed to be your pal. Your cat lives with you and loves you. Your cat is innocent. Why would anyone damage that relationship to bring a few seconds of misguided amusement to phone-addicted automatons who think messing with animals is funny?