Rage Quit

Antonio Brown

There is a saying in American football that “on any given Sunday, any team can beat any other team.” That is to say, anything can happen. The best team doesn’t always win and sometimes you see some very strange things. This past Sunday, we saw a player rage quit in the middle of the game while it was still being played. Antonio Brown took off his jersey and his pads and ran out into the field jumping around. He gave the peace sign before heading to the locker room. It was a truly bizarre sight.

Brown has had some mental health issues in the past. A lot of people think he has brain damage from a vicious hit he took in 2016. Brain injury is something that the NFL has been concerned about for years. It is difficult to know how much damage concussions can do to a person during their lifetime. In Browns case, after the hit, he did some weird things. It is difficult to summarize all the odd things he has done, but I have linked an article that summarizes the major incidents. He appears to have a lot of concerned friends in the NFL and I hope he figures things out. The way he quit is the way we all fantasize about leaving our jobs.

Meaning

Have you ever dreamt about yelling at your boss, throwing all your stuff on the ground and just leaving? Most people have had bad jobs and though about rage quitting. Rage quitting is exactly what it sounds like, quitting something in a very angry way. The term is often used in video gaming when someone suddenly quits a game because things didn’t go well or they were having a bad day.

Example: The puzzle was too hard. After three hours of trial and error, I rage quit and threw it in the garbage.

Origin

Rage quit was first described on March 28^th, 2005 on Urban Dictionary. The entry points specifically to gaming, “ragequit: To stop playing a game out of an anger towards an event that transpired within the game.” Indeed, rage quitting started in gaming. Quake 2 added a “rage quit” sound effect for when a player left the game directly after being killed. The term may have been used as early as the late 1980s in online chat rooms. The term started in the gaming world but has transcended video games. Now it can be used to describe any situation that you quit suddenly out of anger.

Reasons?

So, what makes someone rage quit? A 2014 study found that gamers often quit because of their ego. Losing impedes their psychological need for competence. TVtropes suggests that there are a number of things that can cause a gamer to quit, including avoiding a loss to protect a winning streak, getting the wrong map, having their favorite character being used by another player, to cool off, or to punish their own teammates.

In real life, people also rage quit. The BBC reports that poor management is one of the most common reasons. People can become emotionally exhausted by abusive supervisors. They also list scope creep (added responsibilities), bad schedules, overwork, and lack of concern for safety as other reasons why people are likely to rage quit. However, quitting is not a viable option for a lot of people. As much fun as it would be to get back at the boss, you need to have a back up plan. Have you ever rage quit or thought about it?

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Reference:

https://www.oregonlive.com/nfl/2022/01/antonio-browns-complete-and-disastrous-nfl-timeline-from-the-last-3-years.html
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210903-why-rage-quitting-is-all-the-rage-this-year
https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/rage-quit-definition-meaning-explained-origins-coined
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ragequit
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rage-quit
Przybylski, A. K., Deci, E. L., Rigby, C. S., & Ryan, R. M. (2014). Competence-impeding electronic games and players’ aggressive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(3), 441–457. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034820
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RageQuit