Rage. It’s a thing. The Cumbria Crack partnership is like yin and yang – I’m rageful to the extreme while Lucy Edwards-Rae exudes calm.
Modern life is rubbish and can wind you up no end. Road rage, tech rage, queue rage – we’re all just ready to burst.
Apparently rage rooms are a thing too – where you can release your frustrations by breaking things.
We don’t have a permanent one in Cumbria, but broadband provider Fibrus set up a pop-up rage room in a secret location in Carlisle.
This, too, actually fills me with rage as we’ve fallen for the PR stunt hook, line and sinker. (Cue the several hundred comments on the Facebook post to accompany this article asking if this is news).
But it’s an evening out for the Cumbria Crack team.
Apparently, it’s been extremely popular, with lots of people lining up to have a go.
The free experience in Carlisle was provided by Smash Space, which runs a successful rage room in Newcastle.
Rage or smash rooms started in Japan in the late 2000s and have since grown in popularity around the world.
Participants spend around 15 minutes inside a specially prepared room smashing items.
After a safety briefing, Lucy was our victim and while common human decency made her a bit hesitant in the first couple of minutes or so, she soon got into the swing – a stereo got a particularly good going over with a wrench.
Dressed in some very fashionable safety gear – an oversized boiler suit, gloves and motorbike helmet – Lucy started out small by smashing up glass bottles before working her way up to attacking the stereo.
While Lucy isn’t the kind of person to need an outlet for her anger or rage, she said she did quickly find it to be a good stress reliever.
And once she got over her fear of glass and plastic flying everywhere and the guilt of destroying an old stereo – she did eventually get into the swing of things.
The Northern Ireland-based firm, which is continuing to roll out full fibre broadband across Cumbria, repeated its promise of zero mid-contract price hikes in the wake of significant industry price rises by other providers recently.
Of course there were routers in the room from other providers – although they did seem difficult to smash.
Apparently it is quite difficult to break a router as it took her several whacks and a good few minutes for a circuit board to appear.
She said: “The experience lasted a total of 15 minutes, which might sound like a small amount of time, but it did make for quite sweaty work.
“It’s also an interesting social experience, there’s no telling how a person will engage with smashing objects up until they’re actually doing it and I was pleasantly surprised with my smashing ability.
“Before we started, I truly believed I wouldn’t be able to break anything.”
Naturally, the people Fibrus spoke to all described how it helped them take out their frustration about their broadband provider.
Jude Parr, of Wigton, had been excited to try a rage room for the first time and get out her frustration at her broadband provider who “promised the world then didn’t deliver”.
She added: “Then when I tried to get out of the contract they wanted to charge me the full two years even though we were coming to the end of it.
“The rage room was hard work but I really, really loved it. When do you ever get to smash stuff up?”
Sue Reynolds, of Brampton, felt special to have been selected, more so as her daughter missed out, and rated it a 10 out of 10 experience as she vented her anger on her provider.
“Living in the middle of nowhere where we have limited wifi signal at the best of times, dodgy routers, buffering, all of that, so it was lovely to take the opportunity to smash stuff up,” she said.
Maria Irving, of Carlisle, also turned her ire on her broadband company, saying she couldn’t wait to leave her contract and was delighted to smash up one of its routers.
She said: “It’s different, it’s definitely worth trying, and it was fun.
“But I’m red hot now! It was harder than I thought.”
Colin Hutchinson, Managing Director of Fibrus, said: “The response to the rage room event has been fantastic. It’s clear plenty of people enjoyed the chance to let off steam in a fun and safe way – they literally had a smashing time.
“We know how frustrating unexpected price increases can be, and while we can’t solve that for everyone overnight, we’re proud to offer a fairer alternative with no mid-contract hikes.”
