According to a 2004 psychology study, research proved that disparagement humor, or the popularly known “roasting,” acts as a social lubricant. Most people find pleasure through roasting to get well acquainted with each other; this explains why most celebrities and community icons will allow roasting among their audience as a way of amusement.
Sometime back, Niece Waidhofer went public with a sign reading “r/Roast Me” the Reddit community embraced the challenge with anticipation. In just a short time, the 200,000 Reddit members had a lot to say to the model. Waidhoefer has a way to keep her fans on toes with her revealing posts, not to mention her skin and make-up.
Consequently, when the Reddit community stepped to the task, the platform flared up with comments about her sculpted eyebrows, long eyelashes, long hair, and make-up, which is always on point.Two other issues that came up are how she has managed to keep her personal life anonymous; the model doesn’t have any records of her childhood or family. Secondly, how much her fans appreciate her body and her bold character of not shying from revealing what the fans want to see. However, her reaction proves that she was not as open-minded or ready to take in the positive and negative reviews as she thought.
Although some comments reflected some die-hard fans, others couldn’t resist giving scathing opinions. The pressure led the model to delete her Reddit account. As expected, this only called more attention to her roasting. The model later uploaded a picture and a video for the audience with captions like “I asked for this,” “this is not to all Redditors, most of y’all are aight, my sub is amazing, and the mods there are godsends. But some of y’all need o fucking chill”. She went on to explain deleting her account owing to the anxiety the comments created. One thing that came up with her come back posts was that she seems to take in the criticism just fine. However, the members were not ready to give her room to breathe just yet; more comments about her body and cleavage streamed in. Also, a guy claiming to be her x joined in with negative reviews.
The burn may have been too much for the model at some point. Still, she knew what she was upto when she asked the community to roast her. She thanked her die-hard fans and appreciated all those that took the time to burn her. Waidhofer has since moved on and has resumed posts and captions on her Instagram. “My brother stole my AirPods so here’s me rockin a pair of WelfarePods” one of her come back posts caption with the hashtag “iamthe99perceentagain” revealed that she is still recovering from the criticism.
Millennials seem to thrill in internet feedback. They believe that to get an honest opinion, one needs to seek a view of those who have nothing to lose. At the same time, some will ask for roasting to call attention to themselves, its important to remain open-minded. A burn is double-edged; it can offer humor, amusement and boost self-esteem; however, if the poking goes too far, it can cause pain, hurt and step on one’s ego. This kind of mind games is for the light-hearted.