IPMAT Indore 2026 · Verbal Ability · Question 11
IPMAT Indore 2026 previous year question on Cause & explanation, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.
RC passage 2: Passage 2 — this question belongs to a set. Read the full set with all 6 questions →
Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions.
Anger can be a useful emotion. It can play a key role in building a strong individual psyche, as also a just society. But the algohacking of our brains to keep them in a state of incessant anger? That’s pure poison. Some companies and individuals draw colossal profits from it, but at terrible cost to general well-being. That rage bait has been declared Oxford English Dictionary’s word of 2025 is indicative of the spread of this poison. In 2024, it was brain rot that came on top. Both speak of the same diseased online ecosystem. All of this is bad enough for adults, but what it’s doing to children is a great nightmare.
Specifically, rage bait refers to online content designed to elicit anger or outrage. Once tech platforms figured out how this kind of content spirals user engagement, the algorithms got tweaked to feed us more and more of the same, activating a diabolical incentive structure of hate. Of course, in this swamp, reality is completely distorted. You could take any major event of recent times as an example and the difference between your newspaper’s reportage and your online feed would be dramatic. Reading responsible accounts of pollution, a terror attack, an election result etc. would give you food for thought. On social media, you would be targeted with stuff doctored to send you into troll mode.
If you block the accounts that most inflame you, you deprive them of your attention, you refuse to buy the hate they are selling. Blocking even hurts them with the algorithm. David did defeat Goliath.
And make no mistake, this is a civilisational battle. We must fight against the atrophy of our attention, its capture by the most terrible types of things that human nature can be drawn to, and to regain our sense and sensibility.
- Ausers actively chase news content that conforms to their political biases.
- Breading responsible accounts of pollution, terror or elections provides social media users food for thought.
- Csocial media content fuels public anger to bring about constructive social change.
- Dtech platforms deliberately supply distorted content that incentivises hate.
Answer & solution
Answer: Option D
Where the passage says it. Paragraph 2: “Once tech platforms figured out how this kind of content spirals user engagement, the algorithms got tweaked to feed us more and more of the same, activating a diabolical incentive structure of hate. Of course, in this swamp, reality is completely distorted.”
Deliberate supply (tweaked algorithms), distortion, and an incentive structure of hate — option (d) matches all three elements.
Why the others fail:
(a) puts the agency on users actively seeking content. The passage describes content being pushed at them: “you would be targeted with stuff doctored to send you into troll mode.”
(b) describes the newspaper experience, which the passage offers as the contrast to rage bait.
(c) claims constructive social change, while the passage calls the result “pure poison”.
Answer: Option 4
Shortcut. Ask who is doing the pushing. The passage is consistently about platforms acting on users, not users choosing — which kills (a) at once. (b) is lifted verbatim from the passage but describes the opposite case, a classic misdirection.
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