"Nathaniel Mitchell, 34, was indicted in Alexander’s death Tuesday after police say he broke into Alexander’s Dallas home through her bedroom window in the middle of the night and beat her about the head with an unknown object..."
WaPo reports.
The Anger Room, as it was called, was cluttered with an assortment of furniture, computers and printers, glasses and bottles and dishes. She didn’t allow machetes or knives or ammunition and required everyone to wear safety goggles, a helmet and a jumpsuit. But otherwise, there were few rules. Upon request, she could even build the scene her customers most desired to destroy.....
"I figured the world needed something like this,” she said... “You see so many crimes, and so many tragedies going on worldwide, and I thought that maybe if there was an anger room somewhere, we could have prevented this, or we could have helped that person out. [The idea] kept growing inside of me until I finally got up and did it.”...
Before she died, Alexander was looking into expanding the Anger Room in Las Vegas and Kentucky. But without Alexander, the Anger Room is no longer in business, at least for now....
Here's a NYT article about her,
"Anger Rooms: A Smashing New Way to Relieve Stress." It's from late November 2016, so there's this:
The American presidential election increased business at some anger rooms. Stressed-out voters traveled all the way to Toronto from New York before and after the election, says Steve Shew, co-founder of the Rage Room there. Customers wrote the name of the candidate they were frustrated with on a plate and smashed it.
At the Anger Room in Dallas, mannequins of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were taking beatings before the election. Customers demolished two Clinton mannequins, requiring replacements. But Trump attracted even more ire. “We’ve gone through at least three of the male mannequins that we have to dress up as Donald Trump,” Ms. Alexander says....
“Some of our typical options are baseball bats, golf clubs, two-by-fours,” Ms. Alexander says. “We get things like metal pipes, mannequin arms and legs, skillets, legs from tables. Sledgehammers, crowbars and things like that.”
Police say Mitchell broke into her house in the middle of the night and beat her about the head with an unknown object....
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39 comments:
Venting doesn’t help. But it sure gets more comments on a blog post.
A beta blocker room would do better. If your heart doesn't speed up, you conclude you're not mad.
Alanis says it was ironic, but Buddha says it was karma.
Stressed-out voters traveled all the way to Toronto from New York before and after the election...Customers wrote the name of the candidate they were frustrated with on a plate and smashed it.
Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to go to Ikea for some plates and smash those? Why does there need to be a business for this? (I mean apart from the money to be made catering to childishness.)
I saw something about this in a video news clip. It's a chance to live out that scene from Office Space. A piñata would be cheaper and probably not so traumatic.
When you're trying to pump up an army or a sports team or anything that needs to feed on strong emotion you feed the anger. Smashing things to bits would be a good part of this endeavor in the work of creating a group of Berserkers. We've been told for years that expressing our anger will get rid of it but neither history nor the results bear that out. I think we can just add this to the list of Lies We've Been Told
It's the human need for ritual--and witnesses.
OTOH, Whitney, football players prance around like children after nearly every play. I prefer a stoic game face and a little dignity.
Anger is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Maybe they were on to something.
Inviting a bunch of rage-aholic strangers to come see you doesn't seem like a good plan.
Donna Alexander is a new trans character added to the 2019 Berlin production of Don Giovanni.
Is that a counter-tenor role? Did they ever take female roles, or did they leave them to Julia Roberts?
So.....did her theory pan out?
It worked so well for Keith Moon.
William James noted that sometimes it's more accurate to say that we're afraid because we run than to say we run because we're afraid.
An obvious question regarding "anger rooms" would seem to be whether the steam-boiler analogy ("releasing stress") is accurate, or whether this might be more like howls from a public address system, where all inputs get amplified into deafening howls by the positive feedback that's built into the system.
Perhaps Ms. Alexander should have done a bit more research on the nature of anger before setting up an anger-management business based on a bullshit assumption. Had she done so she might have learned to understand, and protect herself from, the dangerously angry.
An Anger Room is a good idea once in a while.
I haven't needed this type of an outlet in a very long long while (since my first horrible marriage 28 years ago. Been happily married since then and life is good). Letting the anger outs is a way to get that simmering anger released and make you laugh at yourself when you realize how ridiculous you must appear.
I used to take Tupperware and bounce it around. Kick it across the room. Throw it against the garage wall. Why plastic bowls and cups? Tupperware can't break. It doesn't harm other things (much). And when you are all done acting like a toddler having a tantrum, there isn't anything to clean up. It doesn't cost you anything. Nothing to replace. And it was kind of amusing to see it bounce around.
Then....stack the Tupperware and resume adult life.
After the customers smashed things up, they should have been required to clean up the mess. Using the experience teach the virtues of adulthood would have been a positive thing.
A morning round of Trump-bashing usually leads to a little Chuck-punching around here.
Goose/Michigander
Live by the cudgel ....
Sad, though.
Should Texas allow death by bludgeoning in capital murder cases?
After the customers smashed things up, they should have been required to clean up the mess.
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Good idea.
That is why I switched to Tupperware :-)
After smashing my first glass...I immediately had major regrets. Damn it! I liked that glass. Now I only have a set of 3...sheesh. I'd better clean up the mess before any children step on glass shards That's ALL we need now. Shit! there is a dent in the wall. Wow, do I feel stupid!!!
Tupperware. Much better than glassware ....or guns.
I saw a news story on TV years ago about Japanese companies that have a room for employees to vent anger by hitting a mannequin with a sword, and saying bad things about the boss. I don't know if it actually helped anyone. That kind of thing can vent anger, or build anger.
Anger leads to hate. Hate... to suffering.
I think it is a mistake to help people to channel their anger towards a person or representations of persons.
That might cause people to be able to fixate and focus directly upon that person instead of merely releasing general anger. Letting off steam versus beating up your targets.
Focusing anger upon people or a population will tend to depersonalize the subject of the anger....then we end up with concentration camps, gulags, ethnic cleansing....among other things.
I recall Tom Wolfe criticizing the “vent” metaphor. He came up with an alternative that had the more accurate implication: People on a rampage get their adrenaline going and take it further. Can’t remember his, though.
I use the gym for similar purposes. No breaking things, but pushing a bunch of weight around until you almost collapse can be good therapy. Plus you get stronger and buffer in the process.
This isn’t about relieving anger, it is about worshipping it. The word “rage” is a tip off. Attend some activist group and you hear them going on about their “rage”. Rage is pure, just, ennobling, giving. Rage makes you better.
The bit about traveling is also a tip off. It's a pilgrimage.
prov 29:11
Wild Chicken beat me to it, but it bears repeating- anger (wrath) was considered a deadly sin at one point. Perhaps there is wisdom in that.
isnt that what Baltimore is for?
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake made a stunning admission saying she wanted to give space to those “who wished to destroy.”
"Anger Tourism" could be a thing?
anger (wrath) was considered a deadly sin at one point.
It still is. Wrath is one of those things God keeps for Himself.
It's not fair to judge a whole business based on a single slip up
To forgive is human, to condemn devine
"Stressed-out voters traveled all the way to Toronto from New York...."
My god - political types are shitty with money. For half the cost of the gas you can buy tons of dishes and glass from a thrift store, your melee weapon of choice - have at it. Jesus the things people are willing to pay for. But no, you have to take a road trip for that....
I will admit that scene from "Office Space" where they crush a misbehaving printer with baseball bats IS a fantasy of mine. But I can DIY that shit.
I wouldn't mind a room where I could take a baseball bat to effigies of Karl Marx and some more recent statists.
I suppose it's better than donning a pussy hat and screaming at the sky.
ALP
Many tech projects i did involved engineering samples shipped to us from foreign partner firms. For US customs reasons, and trade secrecy, we were usually required to provide proof that the items had been "rendered unsuitable for sale" after the project ended.
One team working with a particularly obnoxious partner made and sent a video of the engineers beating the sample (a large color laser printer) to death with crowbars.
I don't think it would be healthy and apparently it wasn't.
Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go (Proverbs 22:24)
The anger bedroom. Sounds like a good business idea.
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