In our angry times, should we worry rage rooms are all the rage?

A place where you can smash up cars, TVS, your mobile phone, might sound appealing but is it really, wonders Jim Duffy

In the US this week, Michelle Obama has been doing the rounds of the TV studios to promote her new book, CNN has launched a lawsuit against President Trump’s White House. The former First Lady takes a swipe at the current First Lady, while CNN has a go at defending the freedom of the press and the First Amendment – etc etc etc – as it seeks to have the press pass for its White House correspondent un-blocked. This after Mr Trump lost the heid and called the the CNN correspondent Jim Acosta “a rude, terrible person”. There are tense re-counts going on after the mid-term elections and the mud slinging is vicious.

Present Trump himself seems angrier. He’s been having a go at French president Macron, essentially telling him that if it was not for the USA, then France may be speaking German now. I mean really?

And, in the UK, Theresa May is in it up to her neck as usual with blatant snipes from her Cabinet colleagues coming in from all directions. Our whole political class is in conflict like never before.

Anger is spilling out on platforms like Twitter with bilious outbursts, while wildfires burn in Malibu, mass murders seem to be becoming more frequent, and the murder figures in “Lawless London” are on track to reach the highest annual total for a decade.

In short, conflict, anger and “he said, she said” arguments are everywhere. But, I think I may have found the solution for it all – The Rage Room!

We are perhaps living in one of the angriest times in political history. But, this tension and conflict looks to be having a top-down element where ordinary people are also on the brink of anger. Our politicians are supposed to lead and gel together a macro-social cohesion that binds us and at least gives us the perception that “the state” has it all covered. But, in recent times it appears to have come undone. This is leading, it could be argued, to a fissure opening up across all social strata that means we are all on high alert. We are all on the brink... and our fight-or-flight cortisol levels are going through the roof, as a result. And that is why our anger and rage is showing itself more frequently and with more consequences. Like all trends across history, we here in the UK are a bit behind the USA. The USA already knows it is angry, so US citizens have resorted to using Anger Rooms. And they are becoming increasingly more popular. With names like the Wrecking Room and House of Purge, they do what it says on the tin.

So what is an Anger Room? Imagine if you will a large cubicle the size of a regular bedroom. You are provided with safety gloves and glasses. You can buy as many smashable items as you want ranging from glasses to plates, to DVD players to televisions. Maybe a guitar or a printer floats your boat. You can have a sledgehammer to smash them up. Or perhaps your weapon of choice is a baseball bat.

You can smash windows, car windscreens, almost anything you fancy. Heck, you can even bring your own box. This means you rent the rage room, but bring your own items to vent your rage and the stuff to smash up. How cool is that? For 30 bucks, you can get rid of all that anger and punch a bag, smash a vase, vandalise a Ford Fiesta and throw a mobile phone off the wall – several times.

The number of rage rooms is rising in the USA. There are already