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If you've ever written a blog, tweeted your opinion or posted a comment, chances are that at some point you'll have experienced what it's like to be the target of someone else's rage.
Whether accidentally or by design, the contributions we make online are bound to provoke a multitude of responses in the people who engage with them. So what happens when you unwittingly find yourself at the centre of a rage-fest?
Raving research
Despite the fact that anger is routinely expressed online via social networking sites, comment sections and blogs (among other platforms), to date there has been relatively little published research exploring how anger is both experienced and expressed over the web.
But in a recent study published earlier this year [1], researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay have started to shed light onto why we rant online, and whether or not it's good for us.
They conducted two studies to explore why people value and visit rant-sites, how participants express themselves while they’re there, and whether there are any benefits (or otherwise) from reading and contributing to such sites.
Consisting of an online survey on four popular rant-sites (participants who completed it were given the chance to win a $50.00 gift card), the first study measured the participants’ general propensity towards anger and the kinds of consequences they had experienced as a result. The second explored the emotional impact of reading online rants, actively ranting, and the difference between users who later returned to the site and those who didn’t.
Here’s what they found.
Readers beware
Contrary to self-reported experience, it transpired that while ranters initially felt more relaxed immediately after posting, they actually experienced higher levels of anger than most, and were more likely to express their anger in maladaptive ways. Not only that, but for the majority of participants, simply reading the rants for 5 minutes was associated with a negative shift in mood.
What’s perhaps more telling are the responses given by those who said they would re-visit the site: 66% said they’d return because the site was ‘interesting’, 33% found the posts ‘funny’, and 17% thought the website provided an ‘outlet’ that would help them ‘feel less alone’.
So, if you're angry...
Beyond their questionable entertainment value, it would appear that rant sites do indeed serve a purpose when it comes to venting and creating a sense of shared experience. What’s unfortunate is the fact that these sites are, ironically, more likely to make you feel worse in the long term. And with most users posting anonymously, the resulting vitriol is likely to be much more toxic that what you’d expect were users posting with their real identity [2].
Reading and writing rants are likely, according to the researchers, ‘unhealthy practices’. So the next time you’re feeling angry about something, try going for a run, boxing your pillow or screaming in an empty field.
You may feel like a nutcase, but at least you’ll get it out of your system.
[1] R. C. Martin, K. R. Coyier, L. M. VanSistine, and K. L. Schroeder (2013). Anger on the Internet: The Perceived Value of Rant-Sites. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16(2), pp. 119 - 122.
[2] K. M. Christopherson (2007). The positive and negative implications of anonymity in Internet social interactions: ‘On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog’. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(6), pp. 3038 - 3056.
