#Evidence indicates that venting-style catharsis feels good very short term and just reinforces one's rage...

[corpsebrigadier]

I made it through my secular Lenten sacrifice of hating on specific people with whom I interact (politicians, fictional characters, and very very broad generalizations of about certain attitudes/beliefs were still okay), and it turned out to be fairly productive save for how vehemently it made me really hate the luxuriant behavior of all the haters I encountered.

In one way it was probably positive, in that I saw how dismal it was to interact with acquaintances who think that social bonding is best accomplished by talking about all the "idiots" in one's life and venting fruitlessly over random encounters that don't matter. In another way, it was very very negative, as I came to deeply envy the freeness of my fellows in bitching about slow walking pedestrians, irritating relations, and people who are wrong on the Internet, and then spent the hours after Holy Thursday mass talking the most vile kind of smack.