About the Trump Rage Index

What is this?

The Trump Rage Index measures how much more (or less) the internet is talking about Trump right now than on a normal day. Every 30 minutes, we scan Reddit, Bluesky, Mastodon and Hacker News, count how many posts mention Trump, compare that with the last 30 days, and surface the most unhinged meltdowns for you to vote on.

Methodology (v5)

The score is relative to normal: 50 means a typical day, 80+ means one of the loudest days of the month, and under 20 means the internet is unusually quiet about Trump. Every platform has its own quirks — Mastodon's hashtag feeds are always ~75% Trump, Reddit's sitewide firehose rarely tops 1% — so each is only ever compared against its own history.

1. How unusual is each platform right now?

For each signal we take the share of posts mentioning Trump and compare it with that same signal over the past 30 days (median and typical spread). The result is a "how many notches above normal" reading. Signals: Bluesky (35%), Reddit comment firehose (20%), the Reddit front page — how many of the top 20 r/all posts are about Trump (15%), Hacker News (15%), AI-rated anger of Trump posts (10%) and Mastodon (5%).

2. Small samples count less

When a platform only turns up a handful of mentions, one post more or less shouldn't swing the meter — so readings built on few mentions are pulled toward normal. A scraper that returns nothing is left out entirely instead of being read as "calm".

3. Blend, smooth, scale

The platform readings are blended by weight, smoothed over roughly the last hour and a half so the needle doesn't jitter between scans, and mapped onto 0–100 on a bell curve centred on 50.

Introduced September 2026; the full history was recalculated with the same method, so the charts and calendar are one consistent series.

Meltdown Spotlights

Each scan, Claude picks the most entertainingly unhinged comment per platform — the creative insults, the all-caps rants, the spectacularly angry hot takes. These become "Meltdown Spotlights" presented Ridiculousness-style with AI-generated host introductions and comedic closing commentary. Every meltdown is framed as a segment on the world's angriest talk show. You can upvote or downvote the best ones.

Rage Levels

0–20Suspiciously CalmWay less Trump talk than a normal day. People found other things to care about. A miracle.
21–40Low SimmerA little quieter than usual. Most people still remember what they ate for breakfast.
41–60Business as UsualA perfectly normal day of being mad online. The baseline outrage hum.
61–80SeethingNoticeably angrier than normal. Rage essays are being typed. Dinner plans are being canceled. He wouldn't even notice.
81–92Full MeltdownOne of the loudest days of the month. Millions of people are losing sleep over a man who doesn't know they exist.
93–100National EmergencyOff the charts versus a normal day. Touch grass? Never heard of it. One man is living rent-free in the entire internet's head.

Data Sources

  • Reddit — the top 20 r/all front-page posts plus a ~1,000-comment sample of the sitewide comment firehose each scan (all subreddits, general conversation — not just political communities)
  • Bluesky — What's Hot feed + Trump search results + reply threads
  • Mastodon — #trump, #maga, #politics hashtag timelines across major instances
  • Hacker News — the latest ~1,000 comments sitewide via Algolia, measuring what share touch Trump
  • News Headlines — Major outlets via NewsAPI/RSS (supplementary)
  • Google Trends — Daily trending searches related to Trump (supplementary)

Disclaimer

This is a satirical data project. The "rage score" is an approximation based on AI sentiment analysis and should not be taken as a scientifically rigorous measurement. We do not endorse or oppose any political figure. We just measure how angry the internet is.