Anger: What Riles You Up?

[sabotabby]

Thanks to everyone who responded to the Big Ol' Anger Survey! You'll notice the entry is friends-only now. I didn't expect people to get quite so confessional. You folks rock.

Let's start with the results to the first question: What gets you angry? (Just like JMPP, I'm reducing everything to numbers. You are 89.3456% angrier than the general population.)


Click on Clarence and his friend to find out what makes Harlem angry.

Injustice tops out the list by a huge margin. Fourteen of you listed injustice, cruelty, or oppression. Somehow, this is not surprising. Closely related—some form of intolerance, bigotry, misogyny, racism, or general asshaberdashery pissed off seven of you.

The next biggest grouping had to do with being dismissed, condescended to, or otherwise not taken seriously: Seven people got riled up about that.

Seven people hate teh stupid.

Six people felt some sort of antagonism towards authority figures, be they Bush or your teacher.

Other significant irritations: lying (4), everything (4), the news or some current event (3), yourselves or your own failings (3), other people (3), the media (2), frustration or unmet expectations (2), entitlement (2), and bad drivers or slow walkers (2). Five of you said something specific that couldn't be grouped with anything else. Three of you were obviously trying to make me laugh. (It worked. By the by, "Pluto-huggers" was my favourite response.) I found it odd that only one person mentioned betrayal, so I didn't group it with the rest of the miscellaneous responses.

The idea I started with is that anger gets a bad rap because it is the emotion most capable of producing change. It's anecdotal, but your responses do seem to fit neatly with that. Hmmm.

Also surprising: Not a one of you mentioned Harlan Ellison grabbing Connie Willis's boob at the Hugos, despite Boobiegate being the one of the leading sources of anger in the blogosphere at the moment. What gives, people?

Comments

[cleobourne.livejournal.com]

I was unaware of the boobygate thing, totally out of the loop on that one. Sorry.

[sabotabby]

I didn't know until this afternoon, but it's causing mass havoc in geek circles. To be fair, it was an entirely creepy thing to do, and he's not exactly apologizing.

[realcdaae.livejournal.com]

I just read about it today.

I thought it was widely known that Ellison was a fucking asshole anyway. Maybe it's just well known to me because my husband has various friends who are on the edges of those circles (dark fantasy and horror writers).

[99catsaway.livejournal.com]

You should do a "what makes you happy?" poll!

I might have to do a "What turns you on" one in similar form:) (Me: Carrots)

[sabotabby]

Oh God. Topics guaranteed to get a ton of comments:

Making fun of hippies
Libertarians
Gay pirates and/or cowboys
Sex (assuming the poster is a reasonably attractive woman)

It's an internets rule.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Pervert.

[groovitude.livejournal.com]

Also no mention of conservators. Or liverals. I sense that a survey that is missing in these is incomplete. Universe somehow must have come off its hinges for this to happen. It requires us to put it back upon the elephant from which it fell.

[groovitude.livejournal.com]

By the by, I'll admit that the existence of this analysis makes me quite pissed. Maybe my anger doesn't want to be categorized and taxonmized in one of your petty bourgeois schemes. I'm breathing hot magma, seeing red, ready to charge. Fuck! I will explode!

[sabotabby]

I AM NOT A NUMBER! I AM A HUMAN BEING!

[groovitude.livejournal.com]

I submit that your infernal schemes have reduced us into the chewtoys of the Internetz, sabotabby. Or should I say, NUMBER 2!?

[sabotabby]

OH TEH NOOES!

[groovitude.livejournal.com]

Now I know you are not Number 1. I had my doubts, but a puppetmaster wouldn't quote a puppet (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v739/aerope4/pinocchio---teh-noes.gif). ;-)

[sabotabby]

Pfft.

[groovitude.livejournal.com]

Lies! Lies!! Old man Geppeto would never sacrifice his wood.

[sabotabby]

Well, there was some anti-Bush, anti-U.S. government sentiment. No Harper rage, though.

[groovitude.livejournal.com]

It's okay. Harper's name is mentione here (http://www.10000reasons.org/). Who cares if no one is angry at him when he is going to put the Western Civ at the end of the line. He can't top Paris Hilton, though. Which seems to indicate that he is the only one.

[sabotabby]

Heh.

Why is Bukkake only #14? And did we talk about the Taiwanese glowing pigs already? Because I actually like those.

[groovitude.livejournal.com]

I know. Bukkake doesn't rank higher due to the massive influence of horny Japanese businessmen. They've been put on notice by me. This should have some effect on the list, like the faces of the moon.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you guys were sending people down to check up on other minorities.

Maybe that'd be a good premise for a sitcom: JEWCOPS!

[sabotabby]

Clarence is Jewish?

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

No, I think he a goyim puppet. But did you catch the part with the guy going off about how the Jews send down cops to Harlem?

Are there other Clarence videos out there. Where can you get them?

[sabotabby]

Oooh, I'd forgotten about that part.

Go to YouTube and search for "wonder showzen." You'll find all sorts of awesome.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I just did! That shit is so great. Stuff like that really make me miss cable. Ther must some kind of lefty of the writing staff, whose else could write lines like "Hey Mortomer, wanna go smash the state?"

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

While I always thought Harlan Ellison, while ocassionally a brilliant writer, was not quite right in the head. This is the first I've hear of this, though.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

Remind me not to post after midnight. I make no sense.

[sabotabby]

Nah, I got the drift. Your tired typing is like my drunk typing.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but typing drunk is more fun

[ghostwes.livejournal.com]

Oh man... Clarence is great!

[sabotabby]

The little girl asking Wall St. businessmen who they've exploited is still my favourite, though.

[ghostwes.livejournal.com]

Where did you see that?

[sabotabby]

It's on YouTube as well. I think it's called "Who Have You Exploited."

[jk-fabiani.livejournal.com]

The idea I started with is that anger gets a bad rap because it is the emotion most capable of producing change

Anger, in my experience, will produce change, but the quality of change is typically damaged by the anger.

[sabotabby]

What is a more effective emotion in terms of creating change?

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

My #2, after condescention/dismissal, is the sense of entitlement - in the sense that one feels authorized to carve out an exception to proper, just, correct, diligent, safe, and moral conduct for nothing more than pure, selfish expediency. The general impulse to offload one's own externalities and risks onto others, to avoid what should be the usual consequences of one's actions, the feeling that, for whatever bullshit unearned reason, one simply deserves a better grade of treatment from the universe and from civilization than others are getting. I hate it when corporations do this, but I get physically angrier when individuals do it face-to-face, as it were, to other people. Cutting in line? Drives me crazy. Talking on a cell phone during a movie or a lecture? Can almost move me to physical violence - I once tore a newspaper out of the hands of a student who was reading during another student's presentation and crumpled it up on front of everyone, which was a pretty juvenile way for me to behave but I was really seeing red. It's why I hate many male, white, southern conservatives - I mean, not just in the abstract, but individually, with names attached - they all whine about their disempowerment but it's clear they would consider the notion that they shouldn't automatically eat the very houses an livelihoods out from under the brown people on the far side of the world, or the blacks that clean their houses and classrooms, a dangerous and insane heresy. They think they deserve their privilege, status, and their wealth. They think they are shown to be morally superior because of the accidents of their birth. They show this in every word and gesture. It makes them intolerable monsters to be near.

The SUV, too, is a wonderful example: a modicum of safety (illusory, of course, but that's to my secret satisfaction) purchased at a general increase in risk of death to non-SUV drivers, i.e. me. "My kids lives as they commute to soccer practice are worth more than your life" is the maxim one must endorse.

In short, I think the categorical imperative is great stuff. Everyone looks at it and shudders over the apparently passionless, abstract exceptionlessness of it, but that's the wrong way to read it. What it actually says: one doesn't get to be exceptional in how one behaves simply because of what one is.

[sabotabby]

I'm surprised that entitlement didn't rank higher, actually. It's a recurring theme around my part o' the blogosphere.

The SUV is a symptom of a deep flaw in Western culture. I mean, automobiles are, in general, but the very idea of choosing a car because it's more likely to kill someone else than you? How very, very disturbing.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

JMPP?

[sabotabby]

Jacqueline Massey Paisley Passey, the high-quality Randroid who gave a statistical breakdown about how she's thinner, hotter, smarter, richer, and hornier than the average American women, and men below her standards should date fat single moms or get mail-order brides.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Oh, her. Right.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Her favorite author is apparently Jane Auel. Ayla, the uber-mädchen! Ayla, who has the most accommodating vagina in the ancient world!