Rage bait: ‘The flight costs €15, we’re not going to give you a foot massage’: Have we normalized being treated badly by advertising? | Society

“Random seat? You’ll lose the window.” “The flight costs €15, we’re not going to give you a foot massage.” “You paid for a seat, not a throne.” Ryanair’s official Spanish account on X has posted messages like these over the past month. Far from causing outrage, they have become almost routine. The Irish low-cost carrier has long embraced an acidic, at times offensive, communication style. But it is not alone. Other brands such as U.S. burger chain Wendy’s or even language learning app Duolingo show that provocation has become a marketing lingua franca.

The term rage bait — chosen as word of the year by the University of Oxford — refers to content specifically designed to provoke anger and thus gain reach. The new advertising language has incorporated this concept in its many forms. On one hand there is the more playful, mocking side: the rogue community manager model — those who run brands’ and institutions’ social accounts — epitomized by Ryanair, which gains relevance by responding to customers with cynicism and joining social media trends. On the other hand there is the more controversial approach that appeals to real, latent conflicts.

Sydney Sweeney’s career still bears the mark of a campaign she starred in last summer for American Eagle, which played on the pronunciation of jeans (the denim advertised) and genes. The ad was sharply criticized for making light of racism at a particularly fraught moment in the United States. In that same country, banners from Artisan, an artificial intelligence company, recently went viral with a blunt message: “Stop hiring humans.”

These kinds of strategies are known as prankvertising. José Prudencio Santamarina, a PhD in advertising and a professor of creativity and digital marketing at universities including Camilo José Cela in Madrid, says that although the tactic is by no means new, it has accelerated in recent years. “Brands are fighting for the scarcest thing people have now, which isn’t money but attention. In this landscape of ‘infoxication’ — intoxication from information overload — and endless scrolling, the old mantra ‘better to be talked about badly than not at all’ is truer than ever,” he explains. “They no longer compete only within categories — Coca‑Cola versus Pepsi — but against everything that captures attention: Coca‑Cola versus Adidas, Netflix, influencers, WhatsApp groups, or famous pop groups.”

“This attention‑economy context — in which content is consumed on demand via subscription models without advertising and ad blockers are proliferating — forces brands to rethink how they connect with their audiences,” he adds. In a polarized ecosystem like today’s, especially on social media, this reconnection often comes through confrontation. Lulu Cheng Meservey, a strategic communications guru behind brands such as Shopify and the blogging/newsletter platform Substack, published a manifesto on her own Substack titled Be blunt, in which she broke with conventional practices to free this new kind of marketing. “Those who are stubborn, unconventional and confrontational should not be sugarcoated for fear of upsetting established interests,” she argued. Meanwhile, under the headline “You may hate these companies’ ads. That’s the point,” The Washington Post ran a piece months ago analyzing the reasons behind the rise of this advertising trend.

“Recent research shows that content evoking two emotions — such as anger and anxiety — gets much more audience engagement than content using other approaches,” journalists Tatum Hunter and Nitasha Tiku wrote. However, this logic clashes with the psychological principle of habituation, according to which our response wanes or disappears when we constantly face the same stimulus. In 2026, the era of meticulously planned social media controversies feels distant and audiences are increasingly less impressionable. So it is fair to ask: do these strategies still generate the same interest?

A little pleases, a lot tires

Fernando de Córdoba, a branding expert, commentator, and author of The Secrets of Brands (Kailas Editorial, 2022), values the shock produced by the provocative style of those early community managers: “It was quite a surprise; we were used to brands addressing us formally on special occasions — a leaflet or a TV ad — and then they began talking to us 10 times a day in a very personal way. People received it quite well.” The problem arrived when brands piled on this disruptive tone. De Córdoba distinguishes a brand’s voice, which should be consistent, from its tone, which adapts to context. “Many brands, like [supermarket chain] Alcampo, jumped on the bandwagon without being clear whether that tone contradicted their own voice. In other cases it made more sense: Ryanair has never been known for treating customers exquisitely. It can be coherent, but I don’t think it’s a good solution. Constantly reminding people they fly with you because they can’t afford anything else, I think, borders on humiliation,” he adds.

This moral limit is also generational. The irony and cynicism of early Twitter were an unmistakable sign of the millennials, but after official accounts — even those of the police or the Spanish Civil Guard — adopted that tone, Generation Z developed a different sensitivity. Video and reels replaced Twitter text and brands moved toward Instagram and the irreverent, absurd tone that thrives there. Yet even so, they don’t always manage to capture the attention of younger people.

Gema Bonales Daimiel, a PhD in advertising and a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, argues that audiences today are more sensitive about setting boundaries. “Audiences are now adept at spotting when a brand is forcing virality or using provocation gratuitously. The public may celebrate a joke one day and harshly criticize it the next if it perceives the brand has crossed an ethical line, ridiculed the consumer, or trivialized a real problem,” she says.

These limits take on special importance at a time when polarizing institutions such as Donald Trump’s administration are adopting the same provocative tone and the same strategy of joining viral trends that brands once embraced. For example, ICE’s anti‑immigration raids were promoted with a Pokémon‑style slogan — “Catch them all” — and in the war in Iran the strikes of Operation Epic Fury were compared to video games like Call of Duty or GTA.

“A few years ago, irreverence could be rewarded in itself; now there is more demand for coherence, authenticity, and responsibility. Rogue communication can work well when there is strategic intelligence behind it, when the tone fits the brand and when the audience understands the humorous pact. But if it becomes contempt, arrogance, or mere pursuit of engagement, it can backfire on the brand,” Bonales warns.

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