R
achel escorted us to the gear room, instructing us
to suit up in full-length coveralls and plastic face
shields. We emerged resembling a very skinny
third of BROCKHAMPTON and met her by the weapons,
a towering wall of recycled compressed wood hung with
baseball bats, crowbars, frying pans, sledgehammers,
wrenches, golf clubs, hammers, hockey sticks and mallets.
Gibby grabbed a large wrench, Sophie an orange mallet.
Jacob took his time choosing a baseball bat and I selected
a long yellow crowbar.
After taking our picture in front of a large marquee
sign, she made to spell out “DESTRUCTION DEPOT
WELCOMES THE MICHIGAN DAILY,” Rachel led us
to the party room. In it, she had graciously pre-arranged
a printer, television, car door, stack of plate ware and
collection of aforementioned coffee mugs for our smashing
pleasure. She ran us through the two rules — don’t
purposefully destroy the room and don’t smash with the
door open — and respectfully left us to our literal devices.
I will never be sure about what happened in the rage
room. But I had left my pocket voice recorder on from the
interview with Rachel, and thus happened to capture our
experience in the party room on audio. A few days after
our visit I listened through the whole thing, curious about
exactly when and how the four of us ended up on the rage
train, full swing.
Turns out we boarded almost immediately upon Rachel’s
departure. After a few shy wisecracks about “The Purge”
and the chorus of Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” playing on
the loudspeaker, someone made the first smash, inviting
all hell to break loose. At this point in my recording, the
conversation between the four of us fragmented into brief,
robotically inexpressive remarks about the destruction
we were inflicting or planning to inflict, erratically
punctuated by ear-splitting shatters, cracks, bangs and
blasts. Eventually, we all began to sound the same.
I want to try the bat / I want to smash this / I love the bat
/ Just toss it up and I’ll smash down / The sledgehammer
is so powerful / Wait can I do something really destructive
/ Is that really what the inside of a TV looks like / Maybe a
different weapon / I want the case to pop open / We should
all get bats / Can someone push down on that / Okay we’ll
get more bats.
We were operating on pure instinct, each of
our individual characters dissolving in the simple
adrenaline of the task at hand. At one point, without
any discussion or stated agreement, the four of us
converged on the stubborn inner machinery of a TV
that refused to yield to our crowbar and began to
methodically pull it apart by hand. It felt good, then, to
be an animal. It feels more complicated now.
I stepped into the hallway for a moment to take
some photos of the rampage through the party room’s
single window. With each click of the shutter, each
second away from the room, I became more aware of
what I was looking at: Through the plexiglass of the
window through the lens of my camera, my boyfriend
and my roommate were systematically smashing a car
door with baseball bats, back and forth, thud THUD,
thud THUD. I lowered my camera, confused. I’m still
confused. Were they mad? Was I mad? Am I mad now?
And … why?
Time worked strangely in the rage room, the way an
inopportune nap can leave you paranoid that you’ve
slept the day away. After what felt like hours, we-in-
singularity decided the deed was done and retreated
to the gear room to become ourselves again. My pulse
was high, hands trembling slightly. Rachel arrived
with complimentary bottles of water. I asked her how
long we had been in there. She said 30 minutes.
I
t’s a bad thing. Our research shows that people feel
good after venting, and because venting feels good,
they assume that it must be working. But it feels
good to take street drugs, too, or eat chocolate.”
This is the input of Dr. Brad Bushman, Social Psychology
Ph.D. and Professor of Communication at Ohio State
University. Dr. Bushman has spent the majority of his
career researching aggression and spoke to The Daily
in a recent phone interview about the rise and impact
of recreational destruction — specifically, axe throwing
and rage rooms.
“It’s like using gasoline to put out a fire, it just feeds
the flame,” Bushman said. “How do you become an
angry, aggressive person? Practice, practice, practice.
And what do you do in these rooms? You practice how
to behave aggressively. You throw axes, bash, break
things, hit, kick, scream, shout, whatever.”
Initially, I was with Dr. Bushman. The morning
after the rage room I picked up an empty mug at
Sweetwaters and had an involuntary impulse to hurl it
across the cafe. Objects became contextually unfixed.
Jacob went home and immediately noticed the arena
that was his home: piano, television, speakers, Xbox.
“My brain doesn’t usually work in units of breakable
or not breakable, you know,” he told me.
But after some time, the academic perspective
seemed more and more myopic. The coffee mug ceased
to feel like a projectile after 36 hours, and I began to
think a little more about what was sending people to
these establishments in the first place versus what was
happening in their heads upon arrival.
During our coffee chat, AJ emphasized the
accessibility of the activity — how anybody can do it,
and how improvement is only a simple adjustment away.
In two years, maybe you will be the axe throwing world
champion. The primal thrill of a first stick or weapon-
in-hand is basic enough to satisfy virtually anyone to
some extent. We are human, after all. And in a world
of increasingly complex algorithms, politics, barriers-
to-entry and interpersonal interactions, where else is
success so simple? So physical? So clear?
And then Ryley hit upon the social element, describing
it as “a really great way to connect physically” with those
around you. I’ve seen this firsthand, in the friendly and
generative competition between Shannon and Anthony
and the singularity achieved between myself, Gibby,
Sophie and Jacob in the rage room. In an age of Tinder
alienation, the idea of throwing an axe or smashing a
television with someone seems, somehow, more profound.
There’s a desperation in there, maybe, but it checks out.
We are desperate.
I didn’t share the exact euphoria of all the first sticks
and weapon-wielding of my peers, sure, but I have also
never served in the armed forces or worked tax season
as an accountant. I was thinking about this at yoga
the other day, then realized what I was doing in yoga:
paying a dumb amount of money to do something totally
primal and taboo — roll around like an animal in a pool
of my own sweat — in a dark, hot room washed in a
shade of red light I describe to my friends as “feeding
frenzy crimson.” I started going to yoga when my work
and my studies began to intensify in a way that gave me
somatic anxiety. I often describe it with the adjective
“cathartic.”
The rage train has been shuttling between money, stress
and serotonin for years, speeding up every time you have
to learn a new programming language or explain what
you really want to do with your life. The recreational
slinging of weapons did not arise in a vacuum, and looks
more to me like a symptom than a cause. There are enough
interest and capital right now for physical rage to be having
a moment as its own enterprise. Let’s cash in. All aboard.
So long as we are stressed and have bank accounts, we
will pay to cope. And the harder we work, the harder we
cope. Whose fault is that?
Back in Axe Ventura, I had asked Anthony why he
thought axe throwing was so trendy right now.
“It’s different, something new,” he told me.
“Other than that, I don’t really know. I didn’t invent it, I
just kind of got on board.”
Wednesday, January 22, 2020 // The Statement
6B
From Page 5B
PHOTO COURTESY OF VERITY STURM