People probably post ragebait here too, but there’s a built-in incentive on Reddit, particularly on subreddits like AITA or the Tenth Dentist, where users are encouraged to up vote the most ‘interesting’ posts, even if they find it offensive. Maybe the equivalents here also have this policy, but upvotes mean a lot more on Reddit than here—some subreddits require a high amount of karma to post, and posting something that’s guaranteed to get passed around and upvoted a ton can get people enough karma to make many more posts, have a buffer in place in case a different comment gets downvoted, or just want a lot of karma for bragging rights. Hell, you can even monetize upvotes now, in some cases.
Here on Lemmy, upvotes mainly just pass your content around for the sake of passing it around. Maybe there’s an algorithm that is more likely to push an unrelated post you made to the top, but the benefits for posting ragebait here aren’t as many as they are on Reddit.
I just tested it out by typing in “Sonic the hedgehog fanart”. For once, I was able to get some decent images without being bombarded by uncanny valley ai-generated images of Sonic wearing Rouge’s outfit or poorly-drawn inflation art. So it seems to be off to a good start.