Venting doesn’t work

I agree with this to some extent, but I think when I get to the point of externally venting I've already pretty strongly internalized the thought. My larger concern with venting is that it seems to encourage bad next step coping strategies for me. I vent that "X is terrible so it's hard for me to get anything done" and oftentimes this gets validated in a way that encourages the "not getting anything done" part, which isn't helpful even when X actually is terrible. There's a fine line between recognizing that you're in a difficult situation and giving yourself an excuse to fail, at least for me.

Like a lot of things, venting is probably good in moderation, as long as you are able to keep it in moderation. The most recent situation I was in I had trouble telling how much of the problem was on me, and then by venting to some coworkers I pretty quickly discovered that nearly everyone felt the same way about X. This was comforting at first, but the more we vented the more I felt justified in blowing off work. I didn't even replace that time with anything personally productive unfortunately. I've regrouped now and am working on getting out of the project the right way, but I wish I handled it better in the first place.

100% agree.

Anger usually stems from a boundary being violated. It's our instinctive evolved response for pushing back against someone who has encroached on us.

When we "vent" to a peer, it is relieving because it transfers that personal boundary to a group boundary. We feel "OK, my peer will now back me up the next time this happens."

Venting is like yelling for reinforcements when you see someone storming your corner of the castle wall.

On the other hand, if these sorts of cathartic expressions of anger did reliably "work" at dissipating anger, I would expect it to show up in even small samples of college students? For it not to show up, either the effect only shows up in certain circumstances or it's actually not very strong.

I guess that's my point, how do you disentangle the need for cathartic outburst from the negative connotations and actual perhaps small positive impact of the cathartic outburst? Is practicing karate and punching boards on a schedule ok?

From my purely anecdotal experience with mentoring younger people, I've seen two main categories of venting:

1) Venting about frustrations by talking them through with someone who will listen. This forces people to put their frustrations into words and elucidate the narrative as they put it into words. This can not only help people identify their feelings and work through them, but it also forces people to decide what a mature response would be. Once you start venting to someone you know, especially someone you respect, you have an incentive to present a mature interpretation and approach to the situation. This can help immensely.

2) The other group tends to want to avoid the mature response part, and instead wants to seek sympathy and confirmation for their frustrations. They deliberately avoid discussing these issues with respected peers or mentors because they know their response is unhealthy and not a good look. They embrace online forums like Reddit and Twitter where they're free to give one-sided stories without fear of their peers calling them out for exaggerating or stretching the details. This type of venting doesn't solve anything because they don't really want solutions in the first place. There's something rewarding or perhaps freeing about hunkering down in the victim role and being showered with sympathy from random internet strangers.

I haven't seen any reason to believe the first type of venting (discussing with respected peers, seeking feedback and solutions in the process) is anything but helpful. However, the latter type of venting (online venting to collect sympathy) does seem to be quite damaging from my limited experience. There's something dangerous about going online to bond with others and seek personal affirmation in a way that's fueled by venting frustrations and victimizations. Once inside of those circles, there's an incentive to continue bringing more frustrations and more victimizations to the table to keep the bonding and community contact flowing.

The story in the article about going to a park to scream together raises my red flags as such a situation: It becomes an in-group thing where you need to adopt an outward appearance of being very frustrated to fit in with the other people in the group. Not a good incentive for improving the situation.