This is still one of the most misunderstood concepts when it comes to pain and rehab.
For a lot of people, the sensation of tightness or stiffness is conceptually quite separate from what people consider pain, something that's not necessarily harmful, and something that might need to be stretched in order to relieve sensation. As opposed to pain, which may require a different process of management.
In reality pain and stiffness are often the same response, just on different ends of a continuum. It's the intensity of this response experience that causes people to treat these sensations differently.
True tightness or stiffness refers to restriction in a joint or muscle, and is often not something that is perceivable by the individual in terms of the sensation, but it might be a sense of not being able to perform a task for example get into a deep squat or pressing overhead.
As such, stretching or massage or self release might feel good and temporarily dull the sensation, but it may not be addressing the route cause and in some cases maybe might be provoking the symptoms and making them worse over the long term.
Typical areas where people report tightness such as the side of the shoulder or neck area or the hamstrings, typically respond much better to direct strength training through range than they do to stretching and massage.
So if you're experiencing what you perceive as tightness or stiffness and rolling or stretching doesn't seem to provide a permanent solution then it's worth getting this assessed and seeing what's actually causing it and if there may be some more effective strategies.
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