Hundreds of Irish people are posting and commenting on Facebook groups called ‘Roast My Selfie’ where they are insulting strangers appearances.
The rules on the pages usually are that someone posts a photo or a video of themselves and wait for other people to ‘roast’ them.
Only another member can give you access to the closed groups, with one group having over 111,000 members.
The people in the groups, who are from the age 14 to late 50s, say it’s fun to slag someone and the people posting their photos are asking for it.
Naoise Kavanagh from Ireland’s Reach Out Organisation which offers supports for young people struggling with their mental health told 98fm that this is a form of bullying which can be difficult to control.
“I think it's part of a wider culture of this kind of behaviour” from shows that insult people’s looks.
“Whether this is TV trying to catch up with social networking or not, it's an indication that we live in a culture of this and shutting down some Facebook pages will not make it go away”.
When asked about how this can affect a person's mental health, she responded, “For the people posting their images I would imagine... it's a case of being noticed when they feel invisible normally, so they're not in a great place to start with and are very vulnerable. For the people commenting, it can't be a good indication of where they're at if this is the kind of thing they do for amusement”.
A 29 year old member from Lucan said, “In no way shape or form is it bullying. It’s a group of people with a sense of humour uploading pictures of themselves knowing full well they are going to get torn apart for the laugh”.
“I haven’t actually roasted anyone’s pictures because the vast majority of people who put pictures up are normal looking folk and I’m not very witty picking out people’s flaws, I more so just laugh at the comments”.
A young man from Coolock also added, “I suppose I find people slagging each other humorous once there’s nothing malicious in it”.
Creator of one of the pages from Dublin talked about what is expected from the pages;
“Slagging off the person in the posted photos on their noticeable faults with their physical appearance and such, whether it being in regards to degrading or laying insult over the recipients exceedingly large forehead, their weight, etc”.
“It's all about the banter at the end of the day and people can't get enough of the silly, although sometimes dark humour”.
Comments on people’s photos from these pages include slagging their weight, facial features, sexuality, race and family members.
In some cases people comment a compliment were in most cases the person in the photo thanks them. The person in the photo often responds to comments defending themselves or insulting the person back.
The Reach Out Organisation also added, “The objective of these pages is to be nasty, I would advise anyone to just stay away from them”.
