The honest half first, because a roast without the receipt is just outrage: showing work can be completely legitimate. Research calls it the labor illusion — people value and trust an outcome more when they can see the effort behind it. A search that shows the sources it’s checking, a draft that streams because that’s genuinely how it’s generated — fair, and often kinder than a blank screen.
The crime is faking it. When the answer’s already computed and the delay is theater added to feel more valuable, that’s not perceived performance, it’s a costume. The tell is constant duration: honest progress tracks real work, so it varies; staged progress takes the same four-second pause whether you asked it to add two numbers or write a novel.
This is an almost-empty lane in the roast genre — everyone piles on the 1994 dark patterns; nobody’s named the 2026 ones yet. The sparkle icon doesn’t make theater honest.