An inside look at the culture of outrage on social media

""Nothing has made as much sense to me as rage baiting," one creator noted in a TikTok video. "My Tik Toks with the most views are all about like controversial topics or things that got people talking.""

""This app is so toxic, people love the rage bait, they love to argue," another TikTok user said in a video. "It's just how this app works. It's what this app thrives on.""

""The downside, at the end of the day, everything just goes to the most terrible types of things that human nature will be attracted to," Influicity CEO and marketing expert Jon Davids told NBC News national senior correspondent Kate Snow on TODAY on Oct. 2. "Explosions, we're going to look at train crashes, we're going to look at whatever grabs our attention and gets that dopamine hit instantly," he continued."

""exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness," according to The Wall Street Journal. "If left unchecked," Facebook would serve users "more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform.""

A New York Times/Siena poll of 1,313 registered voters found polarization to be the nation's second-biggest problem after the economy. Social media feeds are determined by algorithms that serve content based on past likes, comments and shares. Those algorithms tend to favor attention-grabbing, sensational and divisive material, which increases user engagement and time on platform. Creators and users report that rage baiting and controversial topics generate the highest views. Internal platform materials acknowledge that algorithms can exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness, potentially amplifying social conflict and polarization.

Read at NBC4 Washington