Marketing 101: Why you should ragebait

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Ragebaiting never stops working. After all, “ragebait” was named the Oxford word of the year in 2025. It shows many of you fell for being riled up but still keep falling for it anyway.

Ragebaiting should be taught in marketing masterclasses because it gives you free attention and who doesn’t like attention?

Solana has executed the ragebaiting strategy countless times, but I decided to pull the recent one with Starknet to show you exactly how it’s done.

How did Solana ragebait?

See, it’s basically co-marketing but with swag.

Every day, there are at least 10 projects making announcements on X with the regular format: an image or 30-second video + caption.

How are any of them scroll-stopping worthy?

1. Solana had an announcement to make and it was simple – “Starknet token (STRK) can now be used directly on Solana, thanks to NEAR protocol for powering the integration.” But they didn't do simple.

Remember one of the marketing keys I shared in a previous letter:

️ Don’t just dump a post to announce a new feature, be creative about driving traction.

1. So Solana decided to troll Starknet. Here’s the thing : the troll tweet wasn’t originally Solana’s. It was a joke tweet first used by an X user in 2024.

1. Solana recycled it, but many people didn’t know the lore behind that post or understand it was ragebaiting. So hot takes started flying everywhere, and the post exploded to over 1.5k quote tweets and almost 4 million views!

1. The ragebaiting worked. X users were raging.

   

1. Crypto blogs had a feast.

1. To show you it was co-marketing well planned, NEAR Protocol and Starknet responded accordingly.

1. After the integration announcement was made by Solana, NEAR Protocol and Starknet posted to ride on the engagement and impressions.

Did the ragebait work?

Well Solana’s target object in the troll - Starknet witnessed a sudden spike in Google search globally on the day the troll tweet was made. More impressions for both Solana and Starknet raked in as well.

Solana on the other hand saw almost 20x spike in engagement compared to their other posts.

Ragebaiting is fun

Pulling the trigger is fun – just watching everything burn.

You should ragebait

Why? Because:

• Emotions beat logic most times. People don’t scroll to be rational. They scroll to feel something. Rage is one of the fastest emotions to trigger, and once triggered, people can’t help but engage.

• Most algorithms reward conflicts.

• Conflicts give engagement.

• You earn free pr if you ragebait well.

• Nobody cares about another announcement post. Ragebaiting makes them care.

When you shouldn’t ragebait

• When there’s no strategy behind the scene. If you don’t have any announcement lined up before ragebaiting, it may just be taken as noise.

• When you can’t take the heat. Ragebaiting is supposed to be light hearted chaos. If you get defensive with clap backs, ragebaiting is not for you.

• When your brand is the only one throwing punches. It reeks of desperation.

TLDR rage baiting masterclass

• Be controversial (but first ask Micheal from legal).

• Create a beef and coordinate the chaos across the external teams including how they respond.

• Big accounts engage.

• Drop announcement when engagement is peak (max 24 hours).

Web3 marketing stories are boring BUT NOT HERE!

Need help with creating your brand story? Send me an email or a DM on LinkedIn

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