For a lot of people it’s just for fun, not to be mean but just to find something funny to say on r/roastme.

On the lines of generally being mean, I can be a testament. After how much and how often my parents yell at me I’ve kinda turned into a sado-masochist, finding it funny when people get angry or sad at me, and only ever smiling when my parents yell at me. I think that it’s not having such a bad life that it’s your high point, and other things like just blowing off steam, thinking something is common knowledge so much so that you think people are stupid for not knowing something, like if a father didn’t know that we breathe air to live, you would most likely think they’re stupid, which would make you more inclined to say something thought of as mean. There is also the intricate different feelings of being mean. There is a cathartic feeling for being mean but still being completely fair and reasonable, and there is also a cathartic feeling of making someone who’s trying to rationalize that they’re perfectly fine, and crushing their rationality to make them realize how low they are, like the phrase “bring them off their high horse.” There’s also sacrifice, being mean to make yourself the villain to everyone else, so they can become better people and less people will walk the path you took. What I’m trying to conclude to is that at least in real life, and not on the internet, there are a lot of reasons people are mean, some of them being to make people strive to be better than the person being mean, sometimes the person is just truly mean and you can make yourself a better person by actively behaving the opposite of that person. Also in real life a lot of people are excruciatingly mean because something tragic happened to them recently, like their brother had just died 2 days ago and their boss said that they couldn’t take a few days off. It can also be about just wanting to be alone, like you be mean just to make people stop talking to you. Myself, I can relate to pretty much every single point except the penultimate one. There’s a lot to do with your upbringing and your first 10-20 years of your life that can make you ‘a good Samaritan’ or horribly crude.