Rage rooms? Noooooooooo.....

Apparently they've been around for a while, but the first I heard of a "rage room" was a few days ago. 

Rage rooms (smash rooms, wreck rooms) are spaces - typically replicas of living rooms, offices, or kitchens - that people rent out for the purpose and pleasure of destroying all the stuff - TVs, crockery, etc. - contained in them. Patrons can also bring their own goods to destroy. 

Sure, it's better to take your rage out on inanimate objects than it is to take it out on animate humans, but I can't help but think this is a not such a great idea - even if, at one point or another, even the most even-tempered among us has, at least once every 72 years, had a moment when they felt as if they were going to lose it. And of course it's better to lose it by smashing a teacup than smashing someone in the nose. 

But aren't there techniques for deraging?

I really wouldn't know, because I am - for better or worse - one of those even-tempered folks with scant experience flying off the handle.

But despite my lack of experience, even I can come up with ways to defuse without resorting to punching, kicking, smashing, wrecking, raging: 

• Take a deep breath
• Count to 20
• Follow Peter Pan's advice and think lovely thoughts
• Slam a door
• Swear your head off
• Bury your head under a pillow
• Just walk away, Renee
• Make a donation
• Eat ice cream
• Write a note/email and DON'T send it
• Prep your home for a renovation (assumes you can afford the reno)

But that's just me.

I couldn't get an exact number of American rage rooms, but from what I can tell, there are hundreds. (If there's a Rage Room Trade Association, I couldn't find it.) And however many there once were, I'm guessing a few fell out of business during the height of covid. When, of course, people were most in need of a good, restorative rager.

I visited (virtually) a couple of them, and they all seem to promote visiting a rage room for a birthday party, as a date night, for a corporate outing. 

I suppose a date night outing, pre-marriage, would let you gauge whether your prospective mate was a rage machine. (Run, don't walk to the nearest exit, and change your phone number.)

Corporate outing? I think not. I've done the Escape Room with colleagues. And a really benign team event where we learned how to paint our own versions of Van Gogh sunflowers. (Mine turned out pretty well. I wonder whether someone picked it up when I put it out on trash day.) But I really don't want to see my co-workers with their full rage on display. Scary enough when it occasionally happens at work - and I witnessed a few rage episodes over the years. 

Most of the places I checked out can equip you with a golf club, sledgehammer, or baseball bat. Which seems mighty homicidal to me.

A local place, the eponymous Just Smash Shit, offers a Heart Break package. They provide "a room with a mannequin and two crates of smashies!" And suggest that you "bring your own smashables (ex's picture, trinkets, gifts, etc.)." Ugh.

Note that while a crate sounds like a lot of smashables, but the crates I saw are actual milk crates. Just so you know. (I was thinking crate-crate.)

Smashit2, which says that it's "Worcester County's only smash room," solicits donations from restaurants and bars, contractors, storage facilities, and trash removal outfits. They're looking for a range of smashables: vases, laptops, chairs, end tables, ceramics, figurines, small appliances, glasses, lamps...

I can understand someone wanting to donate, say, their eminently smashable Thomas Kincaid angel figurines. But it seems like a lot of the things on the want list might actually be better used by someone who got to buy them on the cheap at Goodwill. One person's trash lamp may be another person's treasure lamp. And electronics can be recycled. Sigh...

Anyhow, I don't imagine I'll ever participate in a rage-a-thon. And unless you can prove to me that, say, a mass murderer intent on shooting up a grammar school can be persuaded to put down his AR-15 in favor of demolishing a toilet with a sledgehammer, I don't think that rage rooms are all the great an idea.

Neither does Psychology Today. (Or at least that was their thinking way back in 2017.)

Rage rooms offer a place to go for people who are feeling the impulse to become physically violent, but they do not want the mess that comes with attacking others. Is this a good prescription for chronic ragers?

Unfortunately, many people still subscribe to the “aggression as a pressure cooker” model of human behavior. According to this logic, if you don’t let off some steam or release your aggression in a timely manner, it will manifest itself in dangerous, weird, and inappropriate ways. Do not hold it in for too long or you will eventually go berserk and lose all control. Hence, the rage room. For a few bucks, you can spend time liberating pent up hostility by annihilating coffee cups with a baseball bat. It certainly sounds fun, but does it work?

Here is the problem: When you spend time thumping an inanimate object, like a pillow, or beating nonliving things in a rage room, you are conditioning yourself to quickly become aggressive next time your anxiety levels rise. So instead of opening up the escape valve on a pot of steam, you are rewarding your distressed feelings with the instant and ephemeral pleasure that comes from throwing dishes against a wall.

...We should be working towards minimizing aggression and violence in society, not encouraging it even if it is dressed up as a fun afternoon demolishing things normally off-limits. 

Amen to that.  

Me, I prefer to eat ice cream and/or think lovely thoughts.