‘Sadbait’: Why algorithms, audiences and creators love to cry online

People say they don’t want to be sad, but their online habits disagree. Content that channels sorrow for views has become a ubiquitous part of online culture. Why does it work?

Whether you’re a state-sponsored misinformation campaign, a content creator trying to make it big or a company trying to sell a product, there’s one proven way to win followers and earn money online: make people feel something.
Social media platforms have been called out for incentivising creators to make their audiences angry. But these critiques tend to focus on content designed to infuriate people into engaging with a post, often called “ragebait”. It’s earned considerable scrutiny and even shouldered some of the blame for political polarisation in recent years – but rage isn’t the only emotion that leads users to linger in a comments section or repost a video.
The internet is flooded with what some call ‘sadbait’. It gets far less attention, but some of today’s most successful online content is melancholy and melodramatic. Influencers film themselves crying. Scam artists lure their victims with stories of hard luck. In 2024, TikTokers racked up hundreds of millions of views with a forlorn genre of videos called “Corecore”, where collages of depressing movie and news clips lay over a bed of depressing music. Sadness is a feeling people might think they want to avoid, but gloomy, dark and even distressing posts seem to do surprisingly well with both humans and the algorithms that cater to them. The success of sadbait can tell us a lot about both the internet, and ourselves.