En-RAGE-ment Tactics
Despite popular belief, long-term, brands will not benefit from rage-bait engagement.
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In 2025, “rage-bait” was chosen as Oxford’s word of the year – tripling in usage in 12 months to “signal a deeper shift in how we talk about attention (both how it is given and how it is sought after), engagement, and ethics online”.
In the same year, global society experienced significant political upheaval and a notable swing towards toxicity. Major social media platforms including Meta and X rolled back hate speech and content moderation policies. Meanwhile, executive orders ending federal DEI programs prompted the deprioritisation of DEI policies in the private sector. Corporate sustainability programs and promises suffered similar fates, following the scrapping of $8 billion of climate-related federal funding and the deregulation of fossil fuels and pesticides.
Within this murky, geopolitical context of self-preservation, bilateral brinkmanship and the prioritisation of might over right, consumers are increasingly characterised as following suit: becoming less liberal, less engaged, and less virtuous. The viral success of Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle campaign, which was received as tantamount approval of white supremacy by many online, was held up — not as a misstep, but something to be emulated.
Instantly positioned as a bellwether for a widespread appetite for toxicity, rage-baiting, and anti-liberal sentiment, in some boardrooms, commercial engagement at a heavy moral cost was mooted with Gilded Age abandon. ‘Inclusive’ marketing is increasingly treated as a phase, now passed. From attitudes towards marginalised communities and activism, to sustainability and ecological concerns, voting patterns and intolerance, toxicity was reportedly no longer a cause for concern. That is fundamentally incorrect.
From woke-baiting to forever chemicals, consumers’ acquiescence to toxicity is overstated.
Toxic Narratives
Over the last year, in brand marketing, numerous companies were considered to have baited engagement. E.l.f. Cosmetics’ partnership with controversial comedian Matt Rife (reportedly a consequence of a lack of due diligence, rather than an intentional rage-bait), Skims’ launch of ‘Face Shapewear’ and ‘Faux Hair Micro String Thongs’ (aka merkins), Reformation’s Nara Smith tradwife-coded collaboration, and even Serena Williams’backing of GLP-1 product Ro — are all conducive to prompting instant surprise, perhaps disbelief, and subsequent clicks.
However, the consumer discourse around American Eagle’s ‘Good Jeans’ campaign, partially as a result of the PR strategies of the players involved following its release, crossed into new territory. Donald Trump called it the “the hottest ad out there.” It was, at first, widely received as a sign that ‘woke-baiting’ worked as a successful engagement strategy. As a result of the controversy, following its release, American Eagle acquired nearly one million new customers. The brand’s stock rose by 30%.
American Eagle says it “is and always was about the jeans”, but Sweeney’s blue eyes and blonde hair, “passed down through generations”, became an instant dog-whistle. The maxim that ‘all press is good press’, was soon however stretched to breaking point. The memeification of subsequent interviews given by Sweeney, in particular her GQ sit-down, the public commentary on her buffed, tweaked and bouncy ‘MAGA-style evolution’ on late night talk shows, and the failure of three of her movies, including boxer-biopic Christy, one of the worst-performing box-office releases in recent history, as well as rumours that Zendaya would refuse to promote Euphoria Season 3 with her, reframed the conversation.
Engagement At The Cost Of Sentiment
Make no mistake: toxic virality came at a commercial cost for American Eagle, as BoF shared in November 2025. Sentiment fell significantly after the campaign dropped, and sales grew 1%, worse than the predicted 2.1%. According to The Business of Fashion’s Brand Pulse tool, American Eagle’s “connection” score, which tracks emotional resonance and positive consumer behaviour, dipped sharply upon the campaign’s release and has yet to return to pre-July levels.
For the majority of brands, rage-bait, woke-bashing, and hate-as-consumer-engagement tactics do little but create a shortlived, high-cost engagement sugar-rush, which primarily attracts impecunious customers unlikely to convert. MAGA’s grip on the cultural narrative of the U.S. is often used to justify cravenly commercial considerations — but the reality of consumer behaviour is far less acute and uncaring.
Data from Pew Research Center and Gallup points to the fact that the majority of Americans continue to hold views associated with liberal leanings: 63% support the legalization of abortion in all or most cases, 68% support same-gender marriage, 64% say that racism towards Black people is widespread in the United States, 59% have an unfavourable view of the Israeli government, and nearly two-thirds have high confidence in vaccine effectiveness.
These figures span 2024–2025 data and include some shifts contrary to the online noise – for example, support for legal abortion has grown since 2021, according to Pew. And Millennials are disproving the trend that people become more conservative as they age: in both Britain and the U. S., they are “by far the least conservative 35-year-olds in recorded history,” as per the Financial Times. Without widespread engagement in healthy property markets, what is there for them to conserve?
What is clear is that ‘cancel culture’ is no longer effective (if it ever was). There is not a finite-enough number of channels from which an individual can be effectively barred. Nor are channel owners willing to halt hate. Now, the most popular open-social platforms are actively promoting discord to sure-up engagement rates. In this ill-informed, fearful age, there will always be an internet-corner in vocal — and at times illegal — support of anything.
Caution is advised in how seriously brands engage with outrage. Bud Light’s clumsy attempt to re-engage conservatives after its collaboration with Dylan Mulvaney prompted boycott, did nothing to stop its t-shirts being ripped apart at MAGA rallies, but it did show liberals it is not aligned with their worldview sufficiently to stand by it. Controversy serves platforms, not brands or talent. In reality, at scale, consumers have not acquiesced to an era of increased toxicity — yet.
In fact, they are more and more concerned about it. While the widely-reported shifts in consumer behaviour in favour of sustainable practices and low impact goods have not decreased their appetite for fast and cheap fashion, concerns around literal toxins are growing in consumer consciousness.
My Jeans Are… Toxic
Forever chemicals have been found in the blood of 95% of the U.S. population, a 2025 study from Brown University found, associated with increased cancer risk, liver damage, thyroid problems, fertility issues, immune system weakening, and developmental harm.
Already, this awareness has spread to food, drinking water, and beauty. This is largely buoyed by consumers’ unprecedented post-pandemic health and wellness concerns. For a hyper-anxious generation, wellness is a form of self protection: young people are overwhelmingly informed about their health.
Nearly 30% of Gen Z and Millennials in the U.S. report prioritising wellness “a lot more” compared with one year ago, according to McKinsey, and while they represent just over a third of the adult population, they drive more than 41% of annual wellness spend. Food and beauty figure heavily in this spend, with both industries already long-impacted by mainstream coverage and regulation around, respectively, the impact of pesticides and the impact of forever chemicals or PFAS (per- and poly- fluoroalkyl substances).
Fashion is now being drawn into these conversations, particularly due to the popularity of gorpcore brands, many of which use forever chemicals to achieve their technical promises. “As luxury fashion moves into gorpcore, and high-performance materials migrate into everyday wardrobes, the risks associated with gorpcore’s performance-enhancing chemicals do, too,” reported Vogue Business last month, alongside a slew of data showing the extent and risks of PFAS in fashion.
But outerwear is not the only issue. Last year, South Korean authorities found that products from Shein and Temu contained carcinogens, hundreds of times over the legal limit. Of particular concern: underwear. Our intimates interact with our own ecology intimately, potentially bleeding toxins and microplastics into genitals and armpits. In California, hormone-disrupting BPAs 19 times above safety limits were found in polyester spandex socks and sports bras from dozens of major brands including Nike, Athleta, Hanes, Champion and New Balance.
Positive change is already in progress, if not widespread. Patagonia now makes all its products without intentionally-added PFAS, and other brands are following suit – Everlane relaunched in 2025 as a “clean luxury” brand, for example. As brands position themselves as solutions, more and more discourse around the problem is expected.
Regulation is coming – to some extent. In beauty, California passed the PFAS-Free Cosmetics Act in 2022, which came into effect last year, and other states soon followed. The EU is working on banning PFAS in consumer products through legislation coming into effect in 2026. Complicating matters is the internal split in the U.S. government – the Trump administration is broadening the use of PFAS-containing pesticides despite findings in Robert F. Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again commission’s initial report that these chemicals are a potential driver of chronic disease.
But, regardless of regulation, as these concerns enter consumer consciousness, they are already having an effect. “In the U.S. and globally for that matter, regulation isn’t solely what’s driving industry action,” Michelle Bellanca, Chief Executive Officer at Claros Technologies Incorporated told press. “It’s multi-faceted; The three recurring factors often discussed are: (1) increased consumer awareness of the PFAS issue; (2) genuine commitment to sustainability demanded by shareholders who are also consumers; and (3) the sheer scale of PFAS related legal action.”
Early adopters in this space are already redirecting wallet-share. Industry of All Nations, a U.S.-based clothing brand, reports that while, initially, half of its customers bought its undyed and chemical-free products for health reasons, now “more people are buying because of how the garments are made and not wanting to put toxic dyes on their bodies”. The clean beauty and organic food industries have and continue to see growth: the global clean beauty market is expected to reach USD 21.29 billion by 2030, and the organic food market grew 7.3% in 2024, ending the year at £3.7 billion – double what it was 10 years ago.
Consumers’ concerns around toxicity are only growing, as controversy over both the toxicity in the industry’s perceived marketing tactics and its products becomes harder to ignore. For brands, the impulse to treat their customers as politically passive or morally disengaged is not a pathway to significant emotional engagement. In the immediate term, short-term popularity with an angry cohort of the population will drive awareness but will not drive positive sentiment.
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Sharp analysis. The American Eagle case perfectly illustrates how metrics can lie, viral clicks don't equal brand affinity and that 30% stock bump came with a sentiment cliff. Watched this play out with a few brands lately where the engagement spike becomes a pyrrhic victory when conversion rates tank and loyal customers quietly bounce.