The Ragevertising
Manifesto

At 25, in 2008, I was laid off from the banking industry. I started an online job board and taught people how to use LinkedIn and social media to find work. I hosted events called Pink Slip Parties.

People showed up. They told friends. They shared my content. They rooted for the underdog and helped me build a business.

Community creates distribution.

I didn't have a massive advertising budget. I had people who gave a shit.

Starting in 2012 I worked inside corporations, where social was mostly treated like a megaphone. New product, post it. Campaign, post it. Press release, post it.

Teams spent hours on calendars, strategy, copy, design, legal review and approvals — sometimes to get almost no engagement. Companies talked about community, but they were primarily accountable to business numbers.

Paid social was often used to force distribution behind content audiences had little reason to care about. And brands frequently got nervous around criticism: delete it, hide it, take the post down, don't respond, call legal.

You can buy reach. You can't buy people giving a shit.

What if we're doing this backwards?

My brother-in-law and I started an ecommerce company called Outlaw Masks. During COVID we went into stores, gave masks to frontline workers, and filmed the reactions.

The content drew strong pro-mask and anti-mask debate, with political and cultural undertones. People argued, defended, attacked, tagged friends — and the videos traveled. In my own account of it, those videos generated millions of views; that is my experience, not independently audited data.

The argument already existed. The content simply gave people somewhere to have it.

The comment section is part of the content.

I was in Las Vegas with my wife to see the Backstreet Boys at the Sphere. At breakfast, the suggested gratuity on the receipt didn't appear to line up with the bill total. I posted about it to warn people.

The comments exploded. Some agreed. Some defended Vegas. Some examined the details — four people at the table, a split check. Some insulted me. According to my own platform analytics, the Instagram post generated roughly 3 million views and the Facebook post roughly 8 million.

The receipt was the prop. The argument was the content.

I kept testing the mechanic — Panera, Publix, Chipotle, restaurants, retail, tipping, customer service, pricing, everyday consumer experiences. The strongest content wasn't necessarily positive or negative.

It was debatable.

• 2008

  Community.

• 2012

  Corporate frustration.

• 2020

  Outlaw Masks.

• 2025

  Consumer experiments.

Attention doesn't come from posting. Attention comes from giving people a reason to participate.

Ragevertising is the strategic use of truth, tension, opinion, contradiction, and participation to create earned attention.

Every comment creates another opportunity: respond, build a relationship, understand the customer, create another piece of content — and sometimes create a sales opportunity.

Too many marketing systems assume the platform will create the engagement for them. Ragevertising requires active participation from the brand.

Social platforms behave a little like slot machines: brands have to keep publishing and testing ideas to create opportunities for distribution. Every post is another pull of the lever — except the brand influences the odds through what it puts into the machine. (A metaphor, not a literal claim about how platforms work.)

Boring goes in? Don't be surprised when nothing comes out.

I don't think brands need another 30-day content calendar.

I don't think posting five times a week is a strategy.

And I don't think pouring more money into paid media automatically fixes content nobody wanted to see in the first place.

Give people something worth talking about.

• Find the tension.
• Start the conversation.
• Create the ripple.
• Earn the attention.
• Turn that attention into action.

That's Ragevertising.