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How to get over software rage

David Coursey AnchorDesk

Published: 07 Mar 2002 17:17 GMT

Do you suffer from software rage?

Although widely misunderstood, Software Rage Syndrome, as the condition is technically known, impacts the vast majority of computer users at some time in their lives. For most people, its effects are short-lived, resulting only in transitory distress. But for others, the condition becomes chronic, with the "user" -- as victims of the syndrome are called -- often facing recurrent bouts of anger and frustration (the main symptoms, which go away only after the errant software does).

Software rage causes sufferers to lose faith in their applications, their computers, Microsoft, the software industry, the people who represent them on the other end of the phone, technology as a whole, and in the most extreme cases, the entire human race.

What causes Software Rage Syndrome? Well, yes, bad software does. But bad software, in and of itself, doesn't result in the cases of software rage that make the news.

Indeed, a second component that's necessary to ignite the most serious cases -- those that result in prolonged anger, depression, and occasionally, users acting out against their technology, sometimes by tossing their computers into large bodies of water. The significance of this last aspect of the syndrome is not well understood, but we can now unravel the rest.