Every few days, a “Roast me” post appears on the front page of Reddit, and it never ceases to amaze me.
If you don’t know the “Roast me” concept, let me explain. A person takes a selfie, posts it on the r/RoastMe subreddit, and then hundreds or thousands of internet strangers compete to come up with the most creative and hurtful ways to insult this person, based on the selfie alone.
I’ve stopped looking at these posts. I’m so insecure personally that I get vicariously uncomfortable even while reading about other people being humiliated.
It boggles my mind. Why would anybody want to get roasted? According to my calculations, you can’t win anything except for a nervous tick. But you can certainly lose any self-acceptance you managed to scrape together over the past half-dozen years.
And yet, day after day, people keep going on r/RoastMe and voluntarily getting their old wounds reopened, and new ones slashed in. And this brings up a very important point about human nature, and ties into something I wrote about yesterday:
The fact is, people only ever do things for a reason.
Of course that’s true for everyday “normal” behavior. But it’s equally true for every stupid or self-defeating or incongruous thing that people do.
Unless somebody is schizophrenic or completely psychotic, they will have a reason deep down for what they are doing. And that reason is not just that they are dumb or weak-willed or forgetful. No. They actually have a goal. And their seemingly nonsensical behavior is getting them there.
For example, one of the most fundamental human drives is the need for consistency. We have a mental model of how the world works, and we don’t want to see that mental model rocked or undermined.
So if somebody secretly believes that they are unattractive (and except for a few lucky narcissists, this includes all of us), what better way to get that confirmation than by having random Internet strangers mock your teeth, eyebrows, or breasts?
Similarly, another fundamental human drive is the need to be significant. To be noticed, relevant, unique. And if you’re not getting that need fulfilled in real life, if people are simply passing you by and not taking notice of you, well, there’s a home for you on r/RoastMe. For the low price of your self-respect, you can get the momentary attention of hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of people.
If you’re looking to persuade people, you’ll have to start looking out for stuff like this. Because it’s not intuitive. Like I said, even though I know people only do things for a reason, I’m still amazed each time I see a new trending r/Roast me post.
I would never do that. And so please don’t write to roast me. But if you want to say something flattering, then definitely send me an email.