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‘That’s not where the cart goes!’: ragebait as accountability entertainment
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DOI：10.1080/1369118X.2026.2665797.png)
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Abstract
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Outrage is a popular way to generate attention on social media, from ragebait and trolling to callouts. Cultural producers also harness social shaming as a content production strategy, repurposing the model of activism-driven callout culture as a form of accountability entertainment, or content that both stages and spectacularizes the intervention into misbehavior. We focus on Cart Narcs, a leading cross-platform provider of accountability entertainment, examining the channel’s YouTube videos, online comments, and public interviews with the creator to identify the production strategies used to capture people in compromising situations and drive them into rage on camera. Cart Narcs is, on face, about confronting people who do not return their shopping carts, but we argue that its actual entertainment value lies instead in the way the Cart Narc expertly ragebaits people who argue with him. Ragebait appeals to content producers because it is formulaic, repeatable, and controlled, while the audience appeal instead centers around the viewer’s desire for achieving moral high ground and catharsis. Cart Narcs generates viewer enjoyment through the feeling of holding someone accountable by watching their comeuppance, but ultimately forwards a politics that is atomized, condemning individuals rather than offering a larger vision of how to incentivize prosocial behavior. Cart Narcs thus demonstrates a production formula that simultaneously claims to provide the catharsis of callouts while profiting from the induced outrage of shopping cart ne'er-do-wells.
Keywords:
Accountability entertainment
callouts
cancel culture
platform studies
ragebait
social media
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