How Companies Hook Us with Rage: The Cluely Case

What do you do when you’ve built a half-baked software idea but still want to cash in? Simple: stir up a storm of outrage online with provocative marketing and watch the investor dollars roll in.

How Companies Hook Us with Rage: The Cluely Case The perfect example is Cluely, a startup founded by 21-year-old dropouts from Columbia University. This week, they unveiled their “undetectable AI assistant” that promises to help you “cheat at everything”—from acing technical interviews to charming someone on a first date.

Cluely’s pitch is bold and unapologetic: “We want to cheat at everything.” Their AI assistant supposedly reads your screen, listens to conversations, and feeds you real-time prompts so discreetly that no one notices. Whether you’re on a work call, in a job interview, or even on a date, Cluely claims it’s got your back.

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The startup’s founder, Chungin Roy Lee, has a history of playing fast and loose. Lee previously faked his way into an Amazon internship before dropping out of university. This week, he doubled down with a $6 million ad campaign showcasing Cluely’s AI in action. In the ad, Lee uses the tool to deceive a date by posing as a 30-year-old successful engineer.

How Companies Hook Us with Rage: The Cluely Case The result? A cringeworthy flop. The date crashes and burns, and the AI’s prompts come off as awkward and impractical. But the ad did its real job: it infuriated thousands online.

Here’s the catch — Cluely’s hyped-up technology doesn’t really exist, at least not as advertised. The software lags, its prompts are clunky, and the promised “undetectability” falls apart within minutes.

But the product itself is beside the point. Cluely’s game is all about rage bait: deliberately sparking outrage to dominate the conversation. The more people rage about it, the more attention it gets, and the more investors open their wallets. So far, they’ve raked in $5.3 million in seed funding.

How Companies Hook Us with Rage: The Cluely Case This is the anatomy of a tech rage bait strategy. Startups like Cluely craft scandalous, in-your-face campaigns to hijack the internet’s attention. The backlash—fueled by accusations of dishonesty or ethical oversteps—only amplifies their visibility.

We’ve seen this playbook before, and we’ll see it again. While the public slams these young founders for their audacious claims, the outrage quietly fuels their next round of funding.

Cluely’s stunt shows how outrage has become a currency in tech. The louder the controversy, the bigger the payoff. As long as investors keep betting on the buzz, startups will keep poking the bear — and we’ll keep falling for it.