Millions Watched a Woman Throw Ice Into a Bathtub. The Argument Is Still Going.

A woman stands over an empty bathtub and throws ice cubes into it, hard, one after another. Nothing else happens. The ice shatters. She keeps going.

Millions of people have watched that video, and two years later they are still arguing about it.

What People Are Actually Doing

The practice is exactly what it looks like. Someone fills a bag or bowl with ice, stands over an empty tub or shower, and throws the cubes hard enough to break them.

The stated reason is anger. Participants are mostly women, and mostly mothers describing the specific exhaustion of small children and postpartum recovery. They say it gives frustration somewhere to go that damages nothing. One creator described it as satisfying the urge to be destructive without actually being destructive.

The appeal is partly practical. Ice thrown into a bathtub leaves water.

Why It Is Back

The video that broke through belongs to Jennifer, 23, of South Carolina, posting as @livingthrulove. It reached 12 million views in its first week in May 2024 and more than 15 million by the end of that month. She called it therapy.

Older clips resurfaced this month during a broader and much more serious online conversation about maternal mental health, sending the ice-throwing videos back into circulation.

The Argument

Supporters see something harmless and practical, and they said so in volume. The most-liked comment on the original video, with more than 253,000 likes, argued that she was channeling anger in a way that did not harm her child.

Critics have focused less on the act than on the camera. If the point is private release, why film it? Some commenters went considerably further and talked about contacting child protective services.

What Clinicians Say, and Where They Split

This is where it gets genuinely unresolved, because two professionals reached opposite conclusions in public.

Ana Aznar, a child psychologist, criticized the method directly, saying it does not address the underlying issue and pointing to research indicating that venting techniques can make things worse and leave people more aggressive rather than less. She recommended journaling and counseling.

Dr. Willough Jenkins, a psychiatrist, went the other way, endorsing ice-throwing as a legitimate coping skill in a response video and suggesting other anger-management exercises alongside it.

The videos show what participants say works for them. They do not establish that throwing ice is a clinically supported treatment for anger or postpartum symptoms.

References: Newsweek | Daily Dot | Know Your Meme