#33- When Bollywood Saw Tomorrow | SRK Film & 2025's Hidden Truth

0:01 Moving from Crowdsource wisdom and excess of voices, opinion experts, No one else really. Speaking of collective delusion, mob mentality and heard behavior. Who is serving you? What? Why? What works and what doesn't to get you to eat it up. Dessert. A dopamine baby rage bait. Word of the year was it. That's crazy. That's crazy that it should be too this past year. Why though? You know your girl Amy was chomping at the bit with that one. Why? How did we end up here? Word of the year, Why are we here?

1:21 Why does it work? You know, like illicit substances. Why are we so addicted? But just a little, just another hit, just a little dopamine social media rage bait? Will it ever be enough? Will we soon have clinics, programs and addiction Centers for social media? For clicks, for likes, for shares, for for rage, rage, bait, recovery? Oh, why are we all so itching? Itching, itching to get so, so angry?

2:34 What does this substance do to our brain? The scans, The brain scans. Neuroimaging. You've seen it. You know the drill. Can you picture it now? This is your brain and this is your brain on rage bait lit up like a Christmas tree high out of your mind and easy. Oops, did I just say that? MMM wow. You know how we all are in an altered state high. It could be alcohol, it could be other substances, it could be a lot of things. But suggestible is suggestible and makes us vulnerable. Vulnerable to suggestion.

3:53 Easy. More easily manipulated. Easy. More easy to control. Easy. Something no one really wants to be, right? Pretty dangerous if you ask me. I mean, shall we talk about consent? Probably not. Here's the thing. We are all entitled to our own choices, to live our own lives, to have our own chosen vices and any consequences for or from our choices or chosen lives or vices live. Who is who to tell who half the time anyway. But we should know what we are ingesting and how it will affect us and our choices.

5:07 Pretty basic doll. You know your girl Amy isn't gonna say nothing when others are walking around without clothes thinking they are wearing head to toe Gucci when all they got going on is just head to toe. That's it. See something, say something. Either way, we all know I'm going to say something. No, Ember's new Klaus Nikki going on here, Kay. Speaking of vices and maybe even junk food, I'm gonna borrow from my silly reality TV fun you all know I have here. Love that stuff. Borrow now from Sutton Straki of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills here, when I say her viral catch phrase name em, let's name em or name them or name it.

6:36 Let's name what rage bait actually is, OK? Ridiculous. Oversized Real Housewives of diva fashion sunglasses off. Nena from Yijuwani. Hey Duwanis adorable and stylish. Serious, Serious Glasses on. Oxford defines rage bait as online content deliberately designed to illicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content. Oh, and like we said, usage of the term tripled in the past year and it was chosen as Oxford's 2025 Word of the Year because it captures how central anger driven engagement has become to online culture.

8:14 Oh, I felt that part in my bones. A resonance of recognition of what is now so familiar. A shiver down my spine of what that really means and says about where we are in the gut punch, because that is kind of what rage bait does to us. I mean, and certainly one way to get attention, punch you basically in the gut, right? Good though anger driven, you see, you see who is driving the bus? Does anger have a well established history of being a good driver? News coverage explains that rage bait is the internet's most effective hook.

9:36 Content that makes people furious tends to get more comments, shares, and time on site. Suddenly I smell dead fish. Something stinks here. Is it all of us fish getting hooked, sitting out rotting in the heat? The anger heat after we took the bait on the hook and got tricked and captured by fish hooks baiting us? Hmm that reminds me not a fish but of bananas. Actually have eaten bananas and cute pick up lines. SRK Zuri a boy a girl publicized lucrative execution. You know, just your typical scenario.

10:55 Typical story of boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy is expected to turn violence into a product, insight outrage to serve power, use real people as props, manufacture outrage, emotionally manipulate people, and create spectacle to grab attention and control people. They've seen it a million times, right? It's how your parents met, right? Same old, same old. Commonplace as all get out. Simple and typical relational and romantic love story trope. Over done. Chick flick. Yeah. Yan Yan, Yan. Boring.

12:01 More like a yow. More like a yow fear BI dil hai Hindustani is almost a pre social media lesson in rage Bay. No, I mean in the film. TV news behaves like an analog version of today's social media platforms. The channel sensationalized riots, murder and a public hanging to boost ratings, framing events to maximize shock and emotional reaction. Rather than understanding Mohan's execution is literally turned into a sponsored shell. He's forced to wear a shirt covered in brand logos. As if his death were a live event to sell around.

13:16 Recent research. You know, I love research. Explains why this strategy is so powerful. I mean, outrage does get more likes and shares. Large Twitter rack studies show that expressions of moral outrage get more positive feedback, likes, shares than neutral content. And then this reinforcement makes people post more outrage over time. Hmm social learning also matters. People adjust their tone to match the norms of their network. Yikes and so true. You can't deny it. It's crazy how that is. It's like code switching too.

14:23 We all do it. I don't know about you, but you can tell where I've been sometimes or who I am with or what I am doing if you know me well by the change in my accent or slang depending. Just me. So because of this social learning, people adjust their tone to match the norms of their network. So in spaces where outrage is common, it becomes the normal way to speak. Totally been there. Interesting indeed, 'cause misinformation exploits outrage. Uh oh, not exploitation again so soon. Experimental work finds that misinformation often spread by piggybacking on anger.

15:38 Suddenly I'm angry at anger. This is just not good, friend. Misinformation is easier to spread with the use of anger as a tool. Anger as a tool, misinformation. You see this? We don't want this. We don't love this. We don't need this false or misleading pose. The trigger moral outrage travel faster and further across platforms so platforms reward the same behavior as well. Oh my fear Be Dil Hai Hindustani critiques using emotional shock and moral anger to pull people in and keep them there. The film's critics know that it is a quote dark satire of media manipulation and political corruption.

17:05 UN quote where outrage is deliberately manufactured to stare at the crowd. So at the time, TV media, not social media, right? Media manipulation using manufactured outrage to deliberately steer the crowd. Interesting here TV is the one stocking outrage for ratings, not platforms with algorithms. This is clearly a thing. Is it here to stay? How long has it been here? Did it I relieve, subside, shrink? Can we control this growing blaze of rage taking over? Bigger than ever, angrier than ever, more profitable and manipulative than ever?

18:23 Creators and outlets intentionally provocative, divisive material. Posts to trigger trigger in general, trigger rage, trigger actions, trigger likes, dislikes, comments, shares, repost, you name it. We named them. We did name it, remember? The thing is though, we got to also remind ourselves. Although it is clear crowds can be steered by controlled anger, we saw how the same public that is whipped into a riot can, once shown the truth on live TV, mobilize to stop the execution and confront politicians online.

19:30 Outrage can fuel harassment. Oh yes, pylons. Mm hmm. Or misinformation campaigns. We see it, we know it, but it can also be redirected toward maybe solidarity and real accountability when deeper reporting and context breakthrough. Which reminds me, I'm not done here. I want to go deeper in this web. Hopefully I can get back out. Yeah, with me.