Angry wank
A wank performed in a state of fury, channelling rage into vigorous self-attention when shouting at the wall has stopped being productive.
What is an angry wank
An angry wank is a wank undertaken not out of arousal but out of sheer, incandescent fury. Something has gone badly wrong. An argument has been lost (or won, but at too great a cost). A parking ticket has been issued. The broadband has dropped during the final of Bake Off. The body, flooded with adrenaline and cortisol and the urge to put a fist through the partition wall, requires a physical outlet. The angry wank is that outlet. It is not romantic. It is not leisurely. It is, in every meaningful sense, a man arguing with himself and losing.
The defining characteristic is force. Where a lazy wank proceeds at the pace of a Sunday afternoon, the angry wank operates with the frantic energy of someone trying to start a lawnmower that has no intention of cooperating. Technique is not a priority. Satisfaction, in the traditional sense, is not really the point either. The point is to convert a dangerous quantity of rage into a slightly less dangerous quantity of exhaustion, and then possibly have a nap.
It is not, by any measure, a sophisticated coping mechanism. But it is faster than therapy and considerably cheaper.
Where the term comes from
The phrase is straightforward enough to require very little etymological spadework. “Angry” describes the prevailing mood. “Wank” describes the activity. British slang is not always this cooperative.
What makes the angry wank culturally distinct is its position within a broader British taxonomy of emotionally motivated self-attention. The sad wank is melancholy. The hate wank is directed at a specific, despised individual. The angry wank is neither targeted nor mournful. It is diffuse, generalist fury looking for somewhere to go. The anger is not about anyone in particular. It is about everything. The council tax has gone up. Someone has parked across your drive again. Your manager has sent a follow-up email that consists entirely of the word “Thoughts?” and it is four o’clock on a Friday.
The term has been in casual spoken use since at least the early 2000s, though it would be a brave academic who applied for the research grant.
How it is used
The angry wank is discussed with a frankness that would be startling in most other contexts but is considered perfectly normal between British men who have known each other for more than six months.
“Had a proper angry wank after that phone call with Virgin Media. Twenty minutes on hold, transferred three times, and then they hung up on me. Felt much better afterwards, though. Cancelled my direct debit and everything.”
“You alright, mate? You look knackered.” “Row with the missus. Slept on the sofa. Had an angry wank at about half two. Didn’t even enjoy it. Just needed to hit something and the pillow wasn’t cutting it.”
The second exchange illustrates a not insignificant feature of the angry wank: it is frequently reported as joyless. The participant is not having a good time. They are performing a biological reset, like rebooting a laptop by holding the power button down. The machine comes back on. Nobody would call the process elegant.
A note on the aftermath
The angry wank is, in its way, a public service. A person who has had one is measurably less likely to send the email they were composing in their head, ring their ex to say something they would regret by Thursday, or get into an altercation at the self-checkout in Tesco. The nation’s A&E departments owe it a quiet debt of gratitude.
The post-angry-wank emotional state is distinctive. The rage has not been resolved. The parking ticket has not been rescinded. The broadband is still down. But the body has been comprehensively swindled into thinking something productive has occurred, and for a window of approximately fifteen to twenty minutes, the world seems briefly, fraudulently manageable. This window should be used to make a cup of tea and absolutely not to make any decisions.
Related terms
The angry wank should not be confused with the hate wank, which requires a specific target for one’s contempt and is altogether more psychologically committed. Nor is it the sad wank, which is gentler, quieter, and considerably more pathetic. The angry wank sits between the two: louder than one, less personal than the other, and not something anyone has ever described as “nice.”
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