Exploring the feminist rage post phenomenon

Over the past few months I’ve noticed the rise of what I’m calling ‘Reddit re-post rage bait’. I’m not quite sure how better to describe this, but I’m sure you’ll have seen similar things. Accounts like AskAubry, which have gathered huge followings by posting screenshots from Reddit and social media, which could broadly be described as ‘men behaving extremely badly’. Occasionally a woman will be the antagonist in these posts, but largely they focus on men treating the women in their lives outrageously badly, in a sexist and patriarchal way.

The platforms

The predominance of posts like this is inextricably linked with the economics of Twitter (which I know I should now be calling X, but I can’t quite bring myself to). These posts started filtering into my world through the then newly introduced ‘For You’ tab on the Twitter app. This seems to work by throwing anything and everything vaguely popular at you and seeing what sticks. It’s not entirely clear how much it learns your preferences, as it seems to be incredibly trend-led. Certain accounts will be in vogue for a week or so then disappear from it completely, to be replaced by similar ones. In theory, the For You tab is a nice idea as a way of discovering people or accounts who might be adjacent to your interests but you wouldn’t otherwise come across. I’m sure many of us must have discovered menswear account @dieworkwear Derek Guy and his strangely fascinating threads through this feature (as attested by many people in his replies).

But this aspect of Twitter also serves to underline the dark but well-known – and deliberately cultivated – flaw at the heart of most social media platforms. They reward interactions, not quality. ‘Popularity’ means the most engagement, not the most truly ‘popular’. Any post will be seen as successful, and therefore shown to more users, as long as it generates enough clicks, replies and retweets. Twitter’s ‘villain of the day’, the likes of Bean Dad, would not be possible without this snowballing effect of angry responses generating more views, generating more anger.

In recent months, Twitter has taken this economics of posting even further, with paid subscribers offered a cut of the advertising revenue generated by their posts. Whereas once monetisation might be limited to cash exchanged for galaxy lamp follow-up tweet adverts, now you may literally be feeding the trolls simply by clicking on one of their posts.

The posts

I’m going to focus on what seems to be the most popular account, Ask Aubry, which at time of writing has 315k followers, and whose multiple daily posts rack up hundreds of thousands of views. Their Twitter bio states ‘Curator of Nice GuyTM WTFs and Trash Takes’. Their Linktr.ee includes Ko-Fi and Cash App, another method of monetisation (although I suspect not particularly successful in this case, due to the nature of the content they provide?), and a Medium profile with two articles (which, full disclosure, I have not read!). Their Medium account has only 1k followers, but is as you would expect quite a different format of content, so a smaller following is totally understandable. The account’s posts highlight some of the worst behaviour, picked (and submitted by followers) largely from Reddit and Twitter – often the ever-popular ‘Am I The Asshole?/AITA’ group on Reddit. Recent ‘popular’ tweets include a woman reporting on her boyfriend’s deeply inappropriate comments about an 18-year-old colleague’s vagina; another sharing that her boyfriend refuses to take time off work to support her post-surgery; and a meme on ‘Motherhood vs “Girlboss”, condoning a traditional, conservative take on motherhood. All of these screenshot are accompanied by captions from Ask Aubry which make it clear that they do not support these views or behaviours. Yet the account recently had to introduce a disclaimer to the screenshots which reads: ‘These posts are meant to bring forward dialogue and discussions of the problematic sentiments shown and not in support’. It’s kind of ridiculous this was needed, as the captions are so straightforward, but it suggests that the account’s popularity was pushing it to unexpected audiences.

So what’s the problem?

It’s clear that Ask Aubry does hold feminist views. The posts are interspersed with reflections on new stories, such as condemnation of Luis Rubiales, which make their views pretty apparent. So why do I come away from the account feeling so uncomfortable? I think it has something to do with the claimed mission statement of inspiring ‘dialogue and discussion’, coupled with the economics of how Twitter popularity actually works. Does the account really achieve meaningful dialogue, or productive debate? Largely, the answer is an obvious ‘no’. The examples chosen are so extreme that there is no room for debate, dialogue or discussion. You’d have to be truly beyond the pale to agree with the antagonist’s ‘problematic sentiments’. Replies vary very little, all taking on a tone of outraged but weary belief, as we all face the fact that behaviour such as this is totally common, because the patriarchy is so deeply engrained in our society, and men are universally terrible. Please, don’t think I’m about to launch into a ‘Not All Men’ argument here. I just question the ‘usefulness’ of posts like this. It can be really satisfying to vent, to laugh at the ‘Nice GuysTM’, and know we’re not alone in finding this behaviour unacceptable. But at the same time, what are we really achieving by shining a light on all the worst examples, and collectively agreeing they suck? Although the introduction of the disclaimer suggests it might not be as closed or unanimous an audience as I imagine, the majority of replies do fall in line with this reading. I question whether engaging with these posts will prompt any change – either in the behaviour of the men it highlights, or those with similar attitudes. I’ve got a limited amount of time and energy in my life, including to put towards furthering my feminism. Why should I put this towards getting angry at anonymous strangers on the internet?

What are we getting from these posts?

So if we’re not getting dialogue and discussion, what are we getting from these posts? Arguably some catharsis – the occasional follow-up posts showing he got his come-uppance – or simply the catharsis of being able to compare with our own experiences and have others confirm that those weren’t ok. This is similar to what accounts like EverydaySexism used to do a decade or so ago (and which have had their own reckoning in recent years). But I think accounts like Ask Aubry take it a step further than these older precedents, actively aiming to outrage their audience into responding. Because that’s what matters in the world of Twitter: engage and outrage.

The posts build a picture of a world where our only power as women is that of extrication

If you’re looking for comparisons to accounts like this, you’re not looking for feminist scholars, zines or community groups. You’re better off turning to places like the Daily Mail, or the similarly popular Twitter account FessHole, which collects outrageous, amusing or shocking anonymous ‘confessions’. Both of these, one for decades, the other in the light of new media, have found ways to use strong emotional responses to garner views, and all that brings with it. Again, I’m sure readers are getting something from these – the shock and horror is in some way addictive, as it is with Ask Aubry’s posts. But what are AskAubry’s posts doing for our world view, our hope, optimism? Arguably, they are fuelling a state of anger, pessimism, and despondency which will only lead to a feminist movement that feels it is fighting a constantly uphill, losing battle, with goals it can never achieve. Ask Aubry’s deluge of purely negative, in many cases criminally horrific posts (many include paedophilic behaviour or rape as the ‘problematic sentiments’) presents a world view where men are inherently sexist, and there is zero scope for change. Ultimately they leave us with a feeling of fear – of being outnumbered, and of being trapped in a world we have no power to change. The frequent responses of ‘Girl, run!’, or ‘I hope he’s now her ex-boyfriend’, while being sound advice in many cases, also build a picture of women needing to escape men, of our only power being that of extrication. A world where men cannot learn to be better people, and have not learned these behaviours and beliefs from those around them, but inherently and unavoidably devalue women. Not to mention the many Incel/Alpha Male call-out posts, where no acknowledgement is made of how or why many and boys fall into the clutches of these ideologies.

Where from here?

I’m not going to have a go at you if you get something from content like Ask Aubry’s. This is in many ways a dark and horrible world, and sometimes we just need to get things off our chests to get through it. What I would reflect is that for myself, I’m trying to be more aware of what I give time and energy to, and how that makes me feel about the world around me. I want to live in a world that does encourage discussion and nuance, and in which I feel I have the power to make a difference. Part of that means choosing to opt-out of certain spaces and debates, and opt-in to others. I don’t need reminding about everything that sucks – I need reminding that I can do something about it. I may not be able to carry this optimism with me every hour of every day, but I’m sure not willing to let things into my life that have it crumbling at my feet. With a plethora of content showcasing any number of perspectives, knowledge sets, and approaches to feminism, why would I choose one that makes me feel it’s a lost cause? No single account will offer the alternative I’m looking for, but therein lies part of the solution: plurality, intersectionality, and above all a variety of experiences. Good, bad and all the rest that makes up our lives as feminists navigating the modern world.

I don’t need reminding about everything that sucks – I need reminding that I can do something about it

In closing, I’m choosing to opt-out of rage, and into hope. In place of inevitability, I want change. And in place of the same old stories, I want new ones. I hope you find them too.

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Thank you for getting to the end of this rather ranty post! This is something that’s been sitting with me for a while, and I’ve not quite been able to articulate my feelings on. Obviously I’ve read a lot of the posts, you can’t help seeing them, and they draw you in with their shocking narratives. Of other people I follow who follow Ask Aubry, they are all self-identified feminists. But I can’t find space in my head for such a one-note, unproductive brand of feminism. So it’s official: I’ve blocked them. Goodbye miserable stories about crappy men, hello space for stories of positive change. Wherever I find them!