I’m Not Going To Take It Anymore Day

What the day is

I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore Day is observed on January 7. It invites people to stop tolerating whatever they have been tolerating.

Origin and background

The line comes from the 1976 film Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky, in which a television news anchor being pushed out has an on-air breakdown and tells his audience to go to their windows and shout that they are as mad as hell and will not take it anymore. They do. His ratings soar, and the network promptly rebuilds its news division around his rage as entertainment.

That is the part usually forgotten. The line is not the film's message; it is the thing the film is warning about. Chayefsky wrote a satire in which broadcast anger is monetized by the people it appears to threaten, and most of what he invented as absurdity has since arrived as ordinary programming.

The psychology is similarly inconvenient for the day. Anger is unusual among unpleasant emotions in that it pushes people toward a problem rather than away from it, which is genuinely useful when something needs changing. But the popular idea that anger should be discharged, that shouting or hitting something lets off pressure, does not survive testing. Studies of venting consistently find it increases rather than reduces subsequent aggression, because rehearsing the anger keeps it active. The pressure metaphor is wrong.

What does work is slower and less satisfying: naming the specific thing, identifying what change would resolve it, and saying that to somebody able to act on it.

How to take part

• Pick one thing you have been putting up with and say so, specifically, to the right person.
• Ask for a particular change rather than describing how angry you are.
• Skip the venting. It reliably leaves people angrier.
• Watch Network, which is sharper and bleaker than its most famous line suggests.
• Notice who profits from your outrage before spending much of it.