At the end of summer 2023, Alix, a young twenty-something, experienced a romantic breakup which, in her own words, upset her, but above all made her very angry. So, this master’s student who has long had difficulty managing her tensions (“until I was devoured from the inside, to the point where I could come to bang my best friends”) decided, this time, to channel them by treating himself to a session in a “rage room”. Appearing in Japan in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis in order to ease the tensions experienced by executives in the tertiary sector in the process of being downgraded, these rooms where you are invited to destroy dishes, household appliances or printers with a baseball bat or crowbars against a background of hard rock have multiplied in Europe or the United States over the last fifteen years.
“Before going, I was angry and excited at the idea of letting out my excess anger. And during the session I felt a real feeling of power. When I left there, I was like empty”, remembers the young woman, who nevertheless admits that the expected calming effect was only short-lived. Despite everything, David Lafranque assures us: “Our rooms are full every week. » The typical profile of its customers? ” There are several of them “responds the co-founder of the Fury Room franchise, present in Paris since 2017, and in Bordeaux, Geneva and Chicago. “We see people passing by who have had a difficult day, parents who come with their teenagers, managers with their teams or even psychologists accompanied by their patients. The majority are women and, in all cases, people who are restrained or introverted on a daily basis. » If these rooms of destruction with supposedly cathartic virtues are so successful, it is because they fit perfectly into an “on edge” zeitgeist.
“The world has way too much anger right now”, also noted the historian Yuval Noah Harari, on December 22, 2023, at the microphone of “Matins de France Culture”. Climatic chaos, geopolitical conflicts, skyrocketing inflation, galloping inequalities, existential security felt to be in the process of crumbling, of being downgraded… There are many reasons which lead to bloodshed. “I, who am usually a very calm person, have recently been regularly prey to repeated excesses of anger.admits Jean-Baptiste, a 41-year-old eyewear maker. I yell at my children when they don’t listen to me, I get angry with my partner when we don’t have the same point of view and, in general, I complain a lot about everything and anything. What. It makes me anxious and guilty, so I try to calm down by doing more sport and moderating my alcohol consumption, but, for the moment, it’s not really working. »
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