Getting Ratioed Is One of the Surest Signs Your Online Post Is Controversial

If you've spent any length of time on social media, you're probably aware that the ultimate currency there is attention. Some people want to absorb mostly positive attention, while others are okay with being personal as long as it means that they're also the main character.

Getting ratioed on social media is an idea almost as old as social media itself, and one that is at the core of this idea of controversial attention. Here's what it means to get ratioed and why you might or might not want it to happen to you.

Being ratioed as an idea originates on Twitter, but it can happen to you on any social media platform where there are a variety of ways to engage. The word itself refers to the ratio of likes and reposts your post gets versus the number of comments or replies it gets. Usually, a post will have more likes and reposts than replies, but getting ratioed happens when those numbers shift and people are replying to your post far more than they are liking it.

Typically, being ratioed means that the post, video, or picture you've uploaded is controversial for one reason or another, and as a result, people are spending their time scolding you for your take instead of giving you more affirmative feedback.

Perhaps one of the most sublime examples of this came in July 2025 when President Trump took to Truth Social only to get ratioed on a site that exists only for people who love him to follow him.

The ratioing occurred when Trump posted about his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, who has been under scrutiny in recent days because of her refusal to hand over information about Jeffrey Epstein.

"We're on one Team, MAGA, and I don't like what's happening," he wrote. "Let's not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about."

Trump's attempt to discourage his supporters from caring about Epstein didn't make the problem go away, though, and actually led to him being ratioed on Truth Social for the very first time. The post received thousands of replies, a number that dwarfed the number of likes and "retruths" that it received, as users told the president how much they cared about this issue.

Of course, this is an issue that was stoked in part by the MAGA movement, who were convinced that there was some broader conspiracy at work related to Jeffrey Epstein's incarceration and death. We know that Trump and Epstein were once friendly, although it's unclear whether Trump is covering anything up.

What is clear, though, is that ratioing can happen to anyone when they run afoul of an online consensus. Ratioing knows no political boundaries, and even the President of the United States can get ratioed if he posts the wrong thing. Most of the time, though, getting ratioed is not fatal, but those posts do represent a moment when a user is out of step with the people who follow them.