Nov. 17, 2025
The Rise of Rage Farms and Coordinated Disinformation
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In this episode we explore how coordinated, anonymous online attacks are manufactured to create controversy, manipulate public opinion, and inflict real-world financial and reputational damage on brands.
That Solo Life, Ep. 322: The Rise of Rage Farms and Coordinated DisinformationEpisode Summary
In this eye-opening episode, hosts Karen Swim, APR and Michelle Kane tackle the disturbing trend of "rage farms" and the growing industry of disinformation-as-a-service. Stemming from a recent article by Mark Schaefer, they explore how coordinated, anonymous online attacks are manufactured to create controversy, manipulate public opinion, and inflict real-world financial and reputational damage on brands.
Karen and Michelle discuss the infamous Cracker Barrel rebrand incident as a prime example of how a small number of fake accounts can ignite a firestorm that appears to be a massive public outcry. They delve into the sinister motivations behind these campaigns, from profiting off stock market dips to sowing general discord. As PR professionals, it's crucial to understand that these are not random bots but calculated attacks. The hosts emphasize the responsibility of PR pros to prepare for these threats, the need for brands to pause before reacting to online outrage, and the importance of verifying information sources. This episode is a critical listen for any communicator navigating the modern digital landscape.
Episode Highlights- [01:42] Introducing the concept of "rage farms," as detailed by Mark Schaefer.
- [03:39] The emergence of "disinformation-as-a-service" and coordinated, anonymous attacks.
- [04:14] Case Study: How the Cracker Barrel rebrand controversy was manufactured by a small number of accounts.
- [05:15] The financial motivations behind rage farms, including short-selling stocks.
- [06:36] Why brands should "take a beat" to investigate the source of online outrage before reacting.
- [07:55] The role social media platforms play and their lack of incentive to stop the spread of disinformation.
- [09:17] The importance of individual responsibility in not spreading unverified information.
- [12:51] A proactive strategy for PR pros: using AI to run crisis simulations and test messaging against disinformation campaigns.
- Article by Mark Schaefer (As mentioned in the episode) - Rage Farms: The Hidden Industry Weaponizing Outrage Against Brands
That Solo Life is a podcast created for public relations, communication, and marketing professionals who work as independent and small practitioners. Hosted by Karen Swim, APR, founder of Words For Hire and President of Solo PR, and Michelle Kane, Principal of Voice Matters, the show delivers expert insights, encouragement, and advice for solo PR pros navigating today’s dynamic professional landscape.
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That Solo Life, Ep. 322: The Rise of Rage Farms and Coordinated Disinformation
Michelle Kane (00:12):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of That's Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with Voice Matters and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how are you today?
Karen Swim, APR (00:27):
I'm doing great, Michelle. How are you?
Michelle Kane (00:29):
Yay. We're rolling along, steamrolling to the end of this year, thank goodness. Come on. 2025. Let's just get this over with.
Karen Swim, APR (00:40):
It's so interesting that for so much of the year we all felt like it was dragging on like, oh my God, is it still 2025? It felt so slow and then all of a sudden October came and it was over, and here we are, facing the holidays.
Michelle Kane (00:59):
Wow. Seriously. Yeah. I did start November thinking it just happened this last 31 days. It was a lot, but it's all right. Well, we'll get through. We'll get through. We always do. It's what we PR pros do. But today we've got a fun topic today. Well, I don't know if it's fun, but
Karen Swim, APR (01:20):
It's fun in a pr sort of dissect it sort of way, but it's actually very disturbing. True. This is true. This is not the part where we tell you if you have small children in the room that they have to leave. It's not that kind of disturbing. It's not. No, your small children can remain in the room, don't worry.
Michelle Kane (01:41):
But it was a, Mark Schaefer published an email recently talking about rage farms. Now we all know that there are bot farms out there and bots are out there on social media to stir up nonsense. However, it seems to have really, I don't want to say, what's the word? This is terrible. It's the opposite of diluted. Anyway, it's a scientific term that I'm sure I got wrong on the chemistry test in 10th grade, but it's through these specific rage farms now that just stir up nonsense out of the blue and make people think that there is a massive news story around an issue, and that causes all kinds of drama, pain, financial damage, and it probably really only involves two or three people, but it's been inflated. I mean, we've touched on this with the Cracker Barrel incident with their rebrand, and it was determined that that really only came from, I forget, X number of accounts, and it was really a tempest in a teapot that blew up and had real impact. So the fact that there are these entities out there that is their purpose to sow discord and drama, to manipulate not just a company's future, but stocks, all sorts of ugliness. So that's fine.
Karen Swim, APR (03:09):
Reading this email from Mark, and I've shared it on a couple of different platforms because I do think that it's so important. When he was introducing the topic and he said that he went down the rabbit hole, I was like, Mark, you prove over and over again why you're my people. I have such great respect for him, and I read every single word of it. I actually even printed it out because I thought that it was so important what was really highlighted, because you're right, we of course know about bots and we know about disinformation, but what he really presented is that there's this disinformation as a service industry. So these aren't just random bots, these are coordinated attacks, and these rage farms actually. So these fake accounts that are anonymous, interact with each other so that they portray being real, and then they have these coordinated attacks against brands.
(04:14):
This terrified me because we all think about maybe how disinformation impacts reputation and some of the other things. What I really had not thought long and deep about in the instance of Cracker Barrel publicly traded company, so a coordinated attack that makes it seem, because it was not real people that initiated this, that the rebrand is a hotbed of political controversy and tying it to culture Wars- 3000, I believe it was 3,296, people were real. So when the real people start to interact with the fake information, it spreads. And this happened when Donald Trump Jr. Interacted. So there's, since it's well known, a quote unquote celebrity interacts with the information, then it spreads, but it wasn't real and how that could affect the company's stock price. So then enterprising, people who are coordinating this rage attack for their own gain will incite this so that the stock prices will dip and then they can shortlist them and make money. That's disgusting on a whole new level to me, that there are people, for their own reasons, will damage a brand. Its reputation, its executives and their financial wellbeing for their own gain or their own entertainment. And I think that we should all be fearful in a way that leads us to take action. This is really happening and we need to understand it so that we can prepare against it for the brands that we represent
Michelle Kane (06:07):
And for ourselves. Completely, completely. Because of course, the brand's initial response is, okay, well as in Cracker Barrel, they just said, alright, fine, we're not going to rebrand. Think of the Money's lost. And you have to wonder, had they realized or known what the true impetus for this was, might they have had the courage to act differently? I like to think that they might have, I'd like to think that brands, if anything, this teaches us to take a beat, even though we'd like to be first and correct, take a beat and say, okay, where is this really coming from? Don't, don't get sucked up into the tornado of misinformation right away. Try and find out where is this coming from and address it directly, because I think on so many fronts that is needed today, we need to call things out for what they're as best we can and as truthfully as we can because your brand also has power and your brand also has a voice. And I don't think any business wants to go through this. So you like to think the eternal optim with a grain of it's not going to, right. You'd like to think that if we truly work together and all decide like, Hey, this happens to anybody else, we're going to hold the lion and trust, but verify. Right? I mean, I think that just makes sense because you're right, this is enraging, it's disturbing. It's to say it's unethical is duh. And I don't know. I only hope they reap what they sow one day. Whoever's doing this,
Karen Swim, APR (07:55):
It's weaponizing AI on a massive scale.
(07:59):
And that does terrify me, and it terrifies me because as Mark pointed out in his newsletter, the platforms that are where this disinformation is getting distributed have absolutely no incentive to put an end to it. So the accounts are anonymous and they just do what they do. And the reason that the platforms don't have an incentive to do anything about it is because it's good for business for them. Exactly. Chaos means that people are on their platforms. It means that they can sell more ads. And so I think we could all say, Hey, we need to hold these platforms accountable. Unfortunately, this year, as the administration's shifted, and I'm not making a political statement here, this is just factually what happened.
(08:56):
We saw many of the platforms back away from their fact checking from really being a participant in solving for Miss mal and disinformation. And unfortunately, we have seen our government officials interact and spread disinformation. And so I believe that the only way that we can begin to curtail this immediately is for people to get really smart about not reacting to the latest hashtag. To always go to a trusted source happened, really happened. And to not spread these lies, you don't have to respond to everything on the internet. Don't repost stuff, don't share it, because you really could be causing long-term damage to someone who does not deserve this. And I just feel very strongly about this. I saw some accounts posting that about the White House reconstruction, and it was part of, it was true, and I jumped in to say, let's not spread misinformation. This money came from private donors, not from the public. The public is not paying for this. Now, there are all sorts of reasons that people have a right to be angry about what's happening, but let's not spread this information. That's not true about where the funding is coming from. So I think that we all have to take a stand. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen with most consumers. And so that means as PR professionals, we have to have these safeguards to
Michelle Kane (10:49):
Yeah, yeah. It's so true. And as you say, each of us individually, it's don't be a surf working on the rage farm, what they're counting on. They want to make us angry and goodness knows there's a lot to be angry about. So yeah, we too have to take a beat. And like you said, that's a perfect example,
(11:11):
And I'm a stickler for all things true. And to me, it's like when you include some misinformation in a valid point that you're making, then to me, the next time I think from you, my trust in you has been diluted. So look, we're not going to get it right a hundred percent of the time, but try because that is a big part of working against this terrible trend. And if we all make it so that it's not worthwhile to use the rage farm concept, then they'll stop. We'll try something else. But if they find it no longer works, because let's remember way back when social media started, it didn't take long for us to realize why is it free? Because the product, so we get to decide how much of us goes into that little ingredient bowl of the ecosystem of each platform.
Karen Swim, APR (12:11):
Yeah, it's just giving me, it's really sad. But as Mark noted, and I agree with this, we're at this point with ai. We're at this point with technology where it is being weaponized. However, we also know that eventually we find ways to neutralize the threat. Something will be created that will give us a defense mechanism against this. In the meantime, I think that we do all of the things that was suggested in this newsletter, and we'll try to link to it, I'm not sure, but we'll try to link to it in the show notes. But one of the things that I thought was just a brilliant idea. So obviously we want to conduct active listening. We want to make sure that we're consistently building trust and credibility with our audiences. But I love this idea of running crisis simulations using ai.
(13:11):
And in recent episodes, we talked a lot about some of the positive aspects of ai, some of the things that we can utilize it for in our work beyond writing or beyond doing some light research. There's so much more that we can be getting out of it. This is another great suggestion. So this came from an expert that Mark spoke with, and he talked about using roleplay scenarios and testing messages and getting feedback. And I thought, this is a great use of AI and it's even better to use AI for that simulation because essentially that's who you're fighting against now. It's not the people with people. We know what works, how to navigate negativity. We listen. We are sure to act upon their concerns where we address things, we answer questions. Human beings, to some degree, we can manage that and we know how to get through that. It can be tough, but we can get through that with the bots. It's a different story. So again, we'll link to this and we definitely, mark has a new book out that we talked about in our book club segment, but we'll try to see if we can grab some of this time and convince him to please come talk to us here because he has a lot of good things to share and say. But I sincerely encourage you all to not only read this, but to dig deeper, do some research, and start to include this possibility into your campaign planning as well.
Michelle Kane (14:57):
Absolutely. Absolutely. We have to know that this is happening, and so we need to be prepared to deal with it. So well, we thank you for joining us today for this episode. We hope you found it valuable, and if you did, please do share it around. Let us know what you'd like to hear, what topics you would like us to cover at soloprpro com. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.
Transcribing live conversations can be tricky so please be forgiving of any typos or errors that you find. Love something here and want to share? Great, please keep reading!
You are more than welcome to share the transcript (up to 500 words) in media articles (e.g., PR News, O’Dwyers), on your personal website, in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Substack), and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include attribution to “That Solo Life” and link back to the soloprpro/podcast URL.
For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above.
But please note that no one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use That Solo Life’s name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, X, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another’s products or services.
Got questions? Email us at info@soloprpro.com.
Michelle Kane (00:12):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of That's Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with Voice Matters and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how are you today?
Karen Swim, APR (00:27):
I'm doing great, Michelle. How are you?
Michelle Kane (00:29):
Yay. We're rolling along, steamrolling to the end of this year, thank goodness. Come on. 2025. Let's just get this over with.
Karen Swim, APR (00:40):
It's so interesting that for so much of the year we all felt like it was dragging on like, oh my God, is it still 2025? It felt so slow and then all of a sudden October came and it was over, and here we are, facing the holidays.
Michelle Kane (00:59):
Wow. Seriously. Yeah. I did start November thinking it just happened this last 31 days. It was a lot, but it's all right. Well, we'll get through. We'll get through. We always do. It's what we PR pros do. But today we've got a fun topic today. Well, I don't know if it's fun, but
Karen Swim, APR (01:20):
It's fun in a pr sort of dissect it sort of way, but it's actually very disturbing. True. This is true. This is not the part where we tell you if you have small children in the room that they have to leave. It's not that kind of disturbing. It's not. No, your small children can remain in the room, don't worry.
Michelle Kane (01:41):
But it was a, Mark Schaefer published an email recently talking about rage farms. Now we all know that there are bot farms out there and bots are out there on social media to stir up nonsense. However, it seems to have really, I don't want to say, what's the word? This is terrible. It's the opposite of diluted. Anyway, it's a scientific term that I'm sure I got wrong on the chemistry test in 10th grade, but it's through these specific rage farms now that just stir up nonsense out of the blue and make people think that there is a massive news story around an issue, and that causes all kinds of drama, pain, financial damage, and it probably really only involves two or three people, but it's been inflated. I mean, we've touched on this with the Cracker Barrel incident with their rebrand, and it was determined that that really only came from, I forget, X number of accounts, and it was really a tempest in a teapot that blew up and had real impact. So the fact that there are these entities out there that is their purpose to sow discord and drama, to manipulate not just a company's future, but stocks, all sorts of ugliness. So that's fine.
Karen Swim, APR (03:09):
Reading this email from Mark, and I've shared it on a couple of different platforms because I do think that it's so important. When he was introducing the topic and he said that he went down the rabbit hole, I was like, Mark, you prove over and over again why you're my people. I have such great respect for him, and I read every single word of it. I actually even printed it out because I thought that it was so important what was really highlighted, because you're right, we of course know about bots and we know about disinformation, but what he really presented is that there's this disinformation as a service industry. So these aren't just random bots, these are coordinated attacks, and these rage farms actually. So these fake accounts that are anonymous, interact with each other so that they portray being real, and then they have these coordinated attacks against brands.
(04:14):
This terrified me because we all think about maybe how disinformation impacts reputation and some of the other things. What I really had not thought long and deep about in the instance of Cracker Barrel publicly traded company, so a coordinated attack that makes it seem, because it was not real people that initiated this, that the rebrand is a hotbed of political controversy and tying it to culture Wars- 3000, I believe it was 3,296, people were real. So when the real people start to interact with the fake information, it spreads. And this happened when Donald Trump Jr. Interacted. So there's, since it's well known, a quote unquote celebrity interacts with the information, then it spreads, but it wasn't real and how that could affect the company's stock price. So then enterprising, people who are coordinating this rage attack for their own gain will incite this so that the stock prices will dip and then they can shortlist them and make money. That's disgusting on a whole new level to me, that there are people, for their own reasons, will damage a brand. Its reputation, its executives and their financial wellbeing for their own gain or their own entertainment. And I think that we should all be fearful in a way that leads us to take action. This is really happening and we need to understand it so that we can prepare against it for the brands that we represent
Michelle Kane (06:07):
And for ourselves. Completely, completely. Because of course, the brand's initial response is, okay, well as in Cracker Barrel, they just said, alright, fine, we're not going to rebrand. Think of the Money's lost. And you have to wonder, had they realized or known what the true impetus for this was, might they have had the courage to act differently? I like to think that they might have, I'd like to think that brands, if anything, this teaches us to take a beat, even though we'd like to be first and correct, take a beat and say, okay, where is this really coming from? Don't, don't get sucked up into the tornado of misinformation right away. Try and find out where is this coming from and address it directly, because I think on so many fronts that is needed today, we need to call things out for what they're as best we can and as truthfully as we can because your brand also has power and your brand also has a voice. And I don't think any business wants to go through this. So you like to think the eternal optim with a grain of it's not going to, right. You'd like to think that if we truly work together and all decide like, Hey, this happens to anybody else, we're going to hold the lion and trust, but verify. Right? I mean, I think that just makes sense because you're right, this is enraging, it's disturbing. It's to say it's unethical is duh. And I don't know. I only hope they reap what they sow one day. Whoever's doing this,
Karen Swim, APR (07:55):
It's weaponizing AI on a massive scale.
(07:59):
And that does terrify me, and it terrifies me because as Mark pointed out in his newsletter, the platforms that are where this disinformation is getting distributed have absolutely no incentive to put an end to it. So the accounts are anonymous and they just do what they do. And the reason that the platforms don't have an incentive to do anything about it is because it's good for business for them. Exactly. Chaos means that people are on their platforms. It means that they can sell more ads. And so I think we could all say, Hey, we need to hold these platforms accountable. Unfortunately, this year, as the administration's shifted, and I'm not making a political statement here, this is just factually what happened.
(08:56):
We saw many of the platforms back away from their fact checking from really being a participant in solving for Miss mal and disinformation. And unfortunately, we have seen our government officials interact and spread disinformation. And so I believe that the only way that we can begin to curtail this immediately is for people to get really smart about not reacting to the latest hashtag. To always go to a trusted source happened, really happened. And to not spread these lies, you don't have to respond to everything on the internet. Don't repost stuff, don't share it, because you really could be causing long-term damage to someone who does not deserve this. And I just feel very strongly about this. I saw some accounts posting that about the White House reconstruction, and it was part of, it was true, and I jumped in to say, let's not spread misinformation. This money came from private donors, not from the public. The public is not paying for this. Now, there are all sorts of reasons that people have a right to be angry about what's happening, but let's not spread this information. That's not true about where the funding is coming from. So I think that we all have to take a stand. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen with most consumers. And so that means as PR professionals, we have to have these safeguards to
Michelle Kane (10:49):
Yeah, yeah. It's so true. And as you say, each of us individually, it's don't be a surf working on the rage farm, what they're counting on. They want to make us angry and goodness knows there's a lot to be angry about. So yeah, we too have to take a beat. And like you said, that's a perfect example,
(11:11):
And I'm a stickler for all things true. And to me, it's like when you include some misinformation in a valid point that you're making, then to me, the next time I think from you, my trust in you has been diluted. So look, we're not going to get it right a hundred percent of the time, but try because that is a big part of working against this terrible trend. And if we all make it so that it's not worthwhile to use the rage farm concept, then they'll stop. We'll try something else. But if they find it no longer works, because let's remember way back when social media started, it didn't take long for us to realize why is it free? Because the product, so we get to decide how much of us goes into that little ingredient bowl of the ecosystem of each platform.
Karen Swim, APR (12:11):
Yeah, it's just giving me, it's really sad. But as Mark noted, and I agree with this, we're at this point with ai. We're at this point with technology where it is being weaponized. However, we also know that eventually we find ways to neutralize the threat. Something will be created that will give us a defense mechanism against this. In the meantime, I think that we do all of the things that was suggested in this newsletter, and we'll try to link to it, I'm not sure, but we'll try to link to it in the show notes. But one of the things that I thought was just a brilliant idea. So obviously we want to conduct active listening. We want to make sure that we're consistently building trust and credibility with our audiences. But I love this idea of running crisis simulations using ai.
(13:11):
And in recent episodes, we talked a lot about some of the positive aspects of ai, some of the things that we can utilize it for in our work beyond writing or beyond doing some light research. There's so much more that we can be getting out of it. This is another great suggestion. So this came from an expert that Mark spoke with, and he talked about using roleplay scenarios and testing messages and getting feedback. And I thought, this is a great use of AI and it's even better to use AI for that simulation because essentially that's who you're fighting against now. It's not the people with people. We know what works, how to navigate negativity. We listen. We are sure to act upon their concerns where we address things, we answer questions. Human beings, to some degree, we can manage that and we know how to get through that. It can be tough, but we can get through that with the bots. It's a different story. So again, we'll link to this and we definitely, mark has a new book out that we talked about in our book club segment, but we'll try to see if we can grab some of this time and convince him to please come talk to us here because he has a lot of good things to share and say. But I sincerely encourage you all to not only read this, but to dig deeper, do some research, and start to include this possibility into your campaign planning as well.
Michelle Kane (14:57):
Absolutely. Absolutely. We have to know that this is happening, and so we need to be prepared to deal with it. So well, we thank you for joining us today for this episode. We hope you found it valuable, and if you did, please do share it around. Let us know what you'd like to hear, what topics you would like us to cover at soloprpro com. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.
Transcribing live conversations can be tricky so please be forgiving of any typos or errors that you find. Love something here and want to share? Great, please keep reading!
You are more than welcome to share the transcript (up to 500 words) in media articles (e.g., PR News, O’Dwyers), on your personal website, in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Substack), and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include attribution to “That Solo Life” and link back to the soloprpro/podcast URL.
For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above.
But please note that no one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use That Solo Life’s name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, X, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another’s products or services.
Got questions? Email us at info@soloprpro.com.