So it turns out that yelling about people you hate all day every day on the internet isn’t really very good for you.
As an article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week notes,
The research has been clear for decades: Venting is bad for us. …
In studies, people report that they feel better after venting. But researchers find they actually become angrier and more aggressive. People who vent anonymously may become the angriest and most aggressive.
In fact, “venting” is really the wrong word for it. Anger doesn’t build up in our body like some sort of gas, that we can relieve with a series of loud and smelly anger-farts on Twitter or in the comment section of a newspaper article we disagree with.
The “venting” theory has been with us a long time, the WSJ piece notes, and it seems to make sense on an intuitive level.
Venting has an ancient history. Aristotle believed in catharsis—the purging of emotions. More recently, Sigmund Freud talked about the hydraulic model, saying that if someone holds anger inside without letting it out, it will build to dangerous levels, much the way steam in a pressure cooker will build if it is not vented.
But anger isn’t a gas. Those who’ve studied the issue suggest that “venting” — whether in person or anonymously on the internet — causes us to become more obsessed with what is angering us, not less. Instead of purging our anger, we end up stewing in our own juices — to switch the metaphor from gas to liquid.
I certainly see plenty of evidence of this amongst the people I write about on this blog and on the internet at large. Those who “vent” their anger the most vociferously don’t get less angry over time, as you would expect if they were actually “venting” something toxic inside of them. Instead, many of them just get angrier and angrier.
We might consider the sad (and very, very angry) career of a certain former A Voice for Men bigwig, who went from being the only member of the AVFM collective who seemed to have any degree of self-awareness to someone who spends his days lashing out at feminists and former allies in what has become a neverending Twitter meltdown.
We might consider the assorted YouTube yellers who’ve become perpetual rage machines; no matter how many rants they upload to YouTube on the purported evils of Anita Sarkeesian or Anita Sarkeesian or even Anita Sarkeesian, their rage is never ever “vented.”
I mean, look at this guy:
That’s no way to live.
The problem isn’t just the anger; it’s the obsession. One of the main reasons that “venting” keeps you angry is that it leads you to ruminate longer about the things that infuriate you the most, when it would be much more healthy for you to stop thinking about these things at all.
Now, obviously, I spend a decent portion of my days reading about, writing about, and sometimes even arguing with, some pretty hateful shitheads. I think it’s important to write about these people. But I try not to let them dominate my life and my thoughts to the exclusion of everything else, and I try not to let my anger at them overcome me.
I don’t read the comments on my YouTube videos. (Well, not regularly.) I avoid tit-for-tat Twitter battles with sea-lions and dogpilers. (Well, most of the time.) I clear my head watching dumb TV and playing Alphabear and doing various other things that have nothing whatsoever to do with the ridiculous and infuriating misogynists of the internet.
And I hope the rest of you are doing that too.
Well, I know a lot of you are, if the wonderfully digressive comments you all leave on this blog make clear. Because talking about games and recipes and posting cat pics and other brain bleach really does keep us all a bit healthier.
Which reminds me: I haven’t posted any open threads in a while. I’ll go do that now.
In the meantime, here’s ten hours of a snow shovel that sounds like “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
H/T — r/GamerGhazi
@Paradoxical
YOU KNEW EXACTLY WHAT I MEANT AND THAT WASN’T IT
I’ve only known a few “ranters” (fortunately) so I can’t say if it’s typical, but what I’ve noticed is that they only do it when they’re feeling helpless – things are spiraling out of control (or so it seems) and they can’t do anything (or so they think). Having a captive audience who’s to afraid to disagree with them appears to be a way of them regaining the feeling of being in control of *something*. That’s entirely illusionary and often just makes things worse, though. And that’s just for them, whoever they’re ranting at almost certainly isn’t going to be having a fun time either.
Though I admit that hyperbolic rants that are clearly born more from sarcasm than anger can be pretty funny.
I wouldn’t really know what that’s like, though. I’m usually too busy thinking up productive ways of dealing with whatever it is (even if it’s just dealing with the aftermath of a situation which I have no control over) to remember that I’m “supposed” to be angry. And even on the occasions when I don’t “forget” to be angry my response is to stop thinking about *anything* until I’ve centered myself… and the anger drains away quickly. No one told me to do that, I figured it out on my own from a young age.
In my mid twenties, when I was far less emotionally healthy, I used to enjoy getting angry and ranting on the internet. My emotions had gotten so repressed that that was the only way I could feel anything at all. Being miserable was better than being blank.
Now… that sort of thing just tires me out. It’s exhausting. I prefer being happy, and trying to share that happiness with others. The world is full of beautiful things and I’m only sorry that it took me this long to notice.
Let me share something that I find beautiful. My apologies for astronomy geeking; please skip past if this isn’t for you.
http://ihp-lx.ethz.ch/Stamet/magic/pictures/crabnebula.jpg
Here’s a much larger version (do not open on a phone, it’s friggin’ massive.)
This is the Crab Nebula. It’s what’s left of a supernova which occurred in AD 1054 and was so bright that Chinese, Islamic and Mesoamerican sources record it as being visible for around two years; at its peak it was supposedly visible with the naked eye during daylight. Even today it can be seen with binoculars if you know where to look.
A supernova happens when a very large star exhausts the fuel in its core; cooling, the outer layers drift away from the core and form an immense cloud of gas. This gas is still extremely hot and so continues to glow, meaning that to an outside observer the star itself simply seems to expand until the gas spreads and cools enough to stop glowing. They are one of the most beautiful and thoroughly badass things in the universe.
The Crab Nebula approximately 11 light years across, and is expanding at 0.005c, or approximately two and a half times the radius of the earth every second. That’s not quite fast enough for relativistic effects to kick in, but it’s getting close. Our entire solar system could fit inside the Crab nebula a million times over.
Those elegant filaments of gas you see strung out through it are the remnants of the supergiant that exploded back in AD 1054. Deep inside it is the core of that old star, still burning, having become a pulsar (a star which shines more brightly out of one part than another, so that as it spins it acts like a lighthouse, flashing its beam past us.) They’re visible because they’re still hot enough to glow. Around the outside is a huge amount of helium, perhaps twenty times as much as the mass of the visible filaments, which has cooled into invisibility. This tells us something about the composition of the outer layers of that old, vanished supergiant.
By studying the composition of the various gas clouds, we can work out what the layers of the star must have been made of. This is deeply exciting because this may be the closest we’ll ever get to being able to dissect a star and see if our theories about them are right.
this isn’t quite connected to the idea of “ranting” but it IS connected to the idea of avoiding “being angry on the internet.”
Relatively recently I made a conscious decision to try to stop getting into arguments or intense discussions online, and to a certain extent to just to make less unnecessary comments to things on the internet. These days it’s pretty common for me to type out a response to something on Facebook or Twitter or wherever, then pause for a moment to ask myself “is there really any reason for me to hit post?”, decide the answer is “no”, cancel the post and move on.
I think it’s helped quite a bit. But then I’ve always been someone who’d much rather be enthusiastic about things I love than rail against things I hate.
. . .
why do i read this blog again?
@brian
Because it has great people on here and the off-topic discussions are great. =oWo=
@EJ – yep, when I was younger and had trouble regulating my emotions I would anger easily. I can remember exactly where I was and what happened when I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore. And I didn’t. Doesn’t mean I don’t still get angry and sometimes act in ways I wish I wouldn’t, but overall I feel much better. I still need to work on stating my needs and addressing them – both to myself and others. I wouldn’t have stayed in a crap marriage for as long as I did or got out of it through passive-aggressive means (which is shit, too), but sudden, overwhelming anger that I take out on others is rare occurrence.
“I clear my head watching dumb TV and playing Alphabear and doing various other things that have nothing whatsoever to do with the ridiculous and infuriating misogynists of the internet.”
I play video games. Currently it’s Wreckfest, a racing / destruction derby game. So relaxing.
@EJ
I’m also a huge astronomy geek and I’m deeply appreciative of your paragraph about stars. o3o The universe is amazing, is it not?
On the topic of anger/resentment, I’m trying really hard not to develop a bad attitude towards the elderly. The reason why I’m finding it hard is because in previous jobs the rudest and most arrogant customers have almost always been 65+ years old. I know there are sweet and lovely old people too, and I’ve met them, but I’ve had such bad experience with terrible ones it’s not having a good impact on the way I see them. Does anyone have advice on how I can keep a level head about this?
Huh, I don’t consider hurling abuse at strangers to be venting or remotely positive. For me venting is finding a sympathetic person who is willing to listen to me let loose on whatever is bugging the hell out of me. Just yesterday a friend patiently listened to my lengthy heated rant, full of vim, vigor and colorful language, about the fabricated Planned Parenthood pseudo-controversy. It wasn’t a conversation, he just nodded in agreement as I vomited my rage out. I did feel better, or at least I thought I did.
If you’re yelling at someone to punish or chastise them you’re being an abusive asshole. I’ve never felt particularly grand after arguing on the internet either, which is why I tend to focus on mockery and humor when responding to WHTM trolls.
@sunnysombrera
Remember Betty White exists? She was born in 1922. And Angela Lansbury, who was born in 1925. Gene Wilder was born in ’33. George Takei and Ian McKellen in ’39. Patrick Stewart in 1940. Some, if not all of them, aren’t assholes.
Hee hee this post has warcorpse 666 in it. A lovely Kevin Logan video.
I have a huge problem with wanting to see all the news, but it has a bad effect on me, but I have an appetite for it. I was thinking about doing myself a favor and stepping back, but the political campaigning and debates and black lives matter, and it never ends. I really don’t know what to do about it. I have no answers.
I’d like to see more of the science that underlies this theory. The WSJ misrepresents the only study they mention, for example: “…those in the control group, who did nothing to vent, were the least angry or aggressive, the study found….” conflicts with this sentence from Bushman’s original paper (which is free to access): “…Participants in distraction and control groups did not differ in terms of how angry they felt…”
Also worth noting is that while aggression and anger were seen to increase (by a “small to moderate” amount), “There was no significant effect for experimental condition
on positive mood”. So while the participants who associated a face with their partner were angrier, they were not in a worse mood because of it.
I haven’t been able to read Bushman’s other studies, but this one hardly disproves the usefulness of venting. It might simply suggest that people stay angry for longer if they have a face to associate with whomever they’re angry at.
I have zero relevant expertise, I’d appreciate any corrections if I’m being ignorant.
Hmm…Interesting article. I guess this phenomenon explains why spending too much time shouting into an echo chamber is so dangerous and why the manosphere is such a hateful, bigoted place.Can this help explain why some people who frequent hate sites turn into mass murderers? While in echochambers, their rage, hated and bigotry is reverberated back at them and it intensives. We have seen this with Elliot Rodger and Dylann Roof . Already hateful people grow even more hateful! Hate breeds hate! I won’t be surprised if this is what happens. I am not sure, but evidence seems to indicate that this is the case. it is a much constructive explanation than the infuriatingly lazy ableist and bigoted response of blaming mental illness.
Yeah, I agree with this – if somebody’s been annoying me for months and I finally yell at them to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, I feel better and stop being annoyed at them almost immediately.
And on the other hand, Breitbart, who literally raged himself to death.
SFHC:
In the moment, yes. But what about afterwards? On the rare occasions when I’ve blown up at someone, I’m then faced with the fact that I still need to be around them, and deal with the festering resentment caused by what I said. It’s awkward, at best, and an apology never entirely fixes it. So I end up feeling like a total shit.
Well that shovel video is pretty awesome.
Although i doubt that this research is legit, after all, it was made by a group called WSJ, move those letters around and it spells SJW!!!! Clearly a hidden attempt by them to further try and take over the world /s
As some people have already mentioned in their personal definitions of venting, it’s not the same to scream at somebody intending to make them as upset as you are as to scream about something. What is probably getting mislabeled as venting is just asking to have your feelings and reactions acknowledged and validated, which is a perfectly normal and healthy thing to do.
It’s that focused and obsessive venting that spreads a polluted cloud of anger over everybody who hears it that’s the bad thing. Especially when it gets repeated over and over in the exact same way.
@sunnysombrera:
If you’re also an astro geek, then here’s something you might find even cooler about that picture.
That blue glow? That’s synchrotron radiation, a phenomenon caused by subatomic particles travelling at high energies through a strong magnetic field. Synchrotron radiation is normally only observed within particle accelerators (a synchrotron is a type of particle accelerator) so the fact that we can see it here means that the magnetic fields within the Nebula must be downright massive.
It also tells us a lot about how stars work. The specific colour of the synchrotron radiation depends on the strength of the magnetic field. Since it’s a uniform blue throughout, this tells us that the Nebula has a fairly uniform magnetic field, probably left over from the corpse of the supergiant star it formed from. We can compare this to the magnetic fields of other stars and to the way we know charged gases will behave inside a magnetic field, to learn about how the supernova would have happened and how other supernovae will happen.
Also, it’s a lovely eerie blue colour. I mean, it doesn’t have to be. It’s a false-colour image so they could have made it any colour they like, but the blue they chose is lovely and otherworldly.
Also:
A lot of elderly people can be assholes. Then again, a lot of people in any given group can be assholes. I try to avoid slipping into the trap of saying “Elderly people are all probably assholes because this one was”, the same way as I try to avoid thinking it of, say, black people or Geordies, but it’s difficult.
I suspect that the asshole elderly were also assholes when they were young. They’re just more visible now because they have time and leisure to indulge their hobby (of being dicks to everyone.)
I have a very different view of elderly people to most, I think. All of my neighbours are much older than I am (the oldest is in his late 90s; one was 103, but she unfortunately passed a couple months ago), and all but one are pretty damn awesome, so I get along with them really well. It’s gotten to the point where it’s broken through my chronic shyness – I still have problems talking to strangers my own age without panicking, but I can sit down and chat with elderly strangers without worry.
I don’t know how to translate my experiences into a suggestion, though, since it all seems to boil down to who you know. Do you have any older neighbours?
All that typechecking and then I screw up the blockquote. Ah me.
Nequam:
Have you seen Ken Russell’s film The Devils, based (indirectly) on that book? It’s… ah… it’s very Ken Russell.
Have you seen Kyle Kallgren’s review of the Ken Russell film The Devils? It’s hilarious.