This lament from “a Former Nice Guy” has been making the rounds of the blogosphere. The fact that here and most especially over in particularly crazy-ass righty-land are falling over themselves in a rush to agree with this tripe only confirms my worst expectations.
But let’s to it, shall we?
I see this question posted with some regularity in the personals section, so I thought I’d take a minute to explain things to the ladies out there that haven’t figured it out.
What happened to all the nice guys?
The answer is simple: you did.
That’s not a resentful beginning at all!
See, if you think back, really hard, you might vaguely remember a Platonic guy pal who always seemed to want to spend time with you. He’d tag along with you when you went shopping, stop by your place for a movie when you were lonely but didn’t feel like going out,
Hey, wait, I know that guy! It was that guy down the street! The one who buys a lot of porn!
Seriously, who the fuck “tags along” with a girl when she goes shopping? If I want to hang out with somebody because I like the person, I do. I don’t expect to earn, like, extra points or something because she’s buying girl stuff (and that’s the implication in this little rant: “I was so good to you because I went along and did all the stupid crap you like when I could have been at home playing World of Warcraft”). If you like the person’s company, then that is its own reward. I’ve gone shopping with girls plenty of times, because I love used bookstores and I like company, and gosh darnit if that isn’t fun all by itself even if I don’t get any pussy afterwards.
And if you want more, then you actually have to try and make sure that the other person knows you want more, which doesn’t happen if you act like an expectant jackass who thinks if he spends enough time standing around awkwardly with his hands in his pockets while that girl he wants to fuck tries on dresses in… okay, I am honestly blanking on the name of a store that specifically sells nice dresses, but that’s probably because I don’t bother to be a whiny little kiss-ass and follow girls around when they go shopping… anyway, said guy figures if he does this enough, suddenly the Fuck Switch gets flipped. Except it doesn’t work that way, because that’s, you know, misogynistic.
How is this shit hard to figure out?
or even sit there and hold you while you sobbed and told him about how horribly the (other) guy that you were fucking treated you.
I just want to say this right now: Guys, if you know a girl who is with a guy, and they’re not married, but you think you would be better for her than her current man person is? Fucking say so. There is no right of ownership here, got it? It may sound like something out of an 80s sitcom, but you’re not screaming out “NO WAIT YOU SHOULD BE WITH ME” at the wedding or anything, you’re just making your own intentions known. You know why guys like this don’t say anything? Because they are terrified of rejection; they know in their guts that she’s going to just say “no” to them, either because of the inherent self-loathing so common in the breed or because they know that, yes, she’s actually happy with the guy he resents. So they just act like chickenshits.
(If they are married, you don’t get to say “I would be better for you.” Even if you might be. There’s a fine difference between bold and stupid.)
Never mind that these idyllic platonic-but-nearly-more scenarios never happen. Really, what single woman is going to go over to Creepy McStalksalot’s house when her boyfriend treats her like shit? “Goddammit, Rodney cheated on me. Who’s going to make me feel better, my girlfriends? My mother? No, wait, I’m gonna go spend time with that guy who remembers every thirty seconds that he’s staring at my tits so he jerks his head upwards for a bit before dropping it right back down. He can comfort me the way nobody else I know and love can, because he wants to fuck me, and as a woman all I want is to be placed on a pedestal.”
At the time, you probably joked with your girlfriends about how he was a little puppy dog, always following you around, trying to do things to get you to pay attention to him. hey probably teased you because they thought he had a crush on you.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t compare this Nice Guy to a puppy dog. People like having puppy dogs around. The puppy will be cute and love a woman unconditionally. The Nice Guy will do neither of these things.
Given that his behavior was, admittedly, a little pathetic,
You have to love it when someone writes a hateful diatribe and inserts a little sentence like this to show everybody he’s being balanced and reasonable. But you know what? The behaviour this guy wrote about is not “a little pathetic.” It is people pointing at you and laughing in the street pathetic. It is Adam-Sandler-movies-after-Happy Gilmore-pathetic.
you vehemently denied having any romantic feelings for him, and buttressed your position by claiming that you were “just friends.”
Interesting use of language here as our scribe claims these women deny having sexual feelings for these fucking losers, as opposed to simply not being attracted to creepy nebbishes.
Besides, he totally wasn’t your type. I mean, he was a little too short, or too bald, or too fat, or too poor, or didn’t know how to dress himself, or basically be or do any of the things that your tall, good-looking, fit, rich, stylish boyfriend at the time pulled off with such ease.
I personally believe that nothing says “sex machine” like a short, bald, fat, poor, uncultured dickweed with no social skills. How dare chicks want to hang out with somebody who actually put time and effort into his own personal upkeep?
Look, I can sympathize with guys who don’t look like Jude Law, because I don’t look like Jude Law either. I’m kind of a loudmouth (my entire law class will attest to this) and if I don’t exercise regularly then I get really fat and zitty. But guess what – that’s why I exercise regularly, and it’s because I’m a loudmouth that I decided early on to work on having a sense of humour and not saying things that were totally stupid, because if you must be a loudmouth, then at least be an entertaining one. It is not some horrible betrayal of who you are as a person to improve yourself specifically to make yourself more likeable. It shows a valuable understanding of social skills.
(Also, since when do chicks not like bald guys any more? Is this guy from the 80s? Did he miss the whole shaven-head esthetic that got really popular fifteen years ago and never went away?)
Eventually, your Platonic buddy drifted away, as your relationship with the boyfriend got more serious and spending time with this other guy was, admittedly, a little weird, if you werent dating him.
…and because the Nice Guy realized, on some subconscious level, that no amount of hanging out with you was going to get him pussy. Not that he could admit this to himself, because this would mean admitting that those jerks who were getting laid regularly were actually working to get it, by learning how to dance or make conversation or tell a joke (an actual original joke, not just quoting “The Simpsons” at somebody) or making sure they looked attractive to their target demographic.
More time passed, and the boyfriend eventually cheated on you, or became boring, or you realized that the things that attracted you to him weren’t the kinds of things that make for a good, long-term relationship.
You know what makes for a good long-term relationship? When the guy expects sex and adoration just because.
So, now, you’re single again, and after having tried the bar scene for several months having only encountered players and douche bags, you wonder, “What happened to all the nice guys?”
Firstly, “douchebag” is one word, not two. So this Formerly Nice Guy lacks grammar and writing skills. No wonder he never gets laid. Doesn’t he know that chicks dig a dude with mad grammar skills? They are after me all the time to show me how I cleft a gerund, it makes them fucking swoon, it does.
Secondly, the bar scene is filled with Nice Guys just like our author here, except that instead of thinking that the Magic Path To Vagina leads through the Valley Of Dutiful Friendship, they think that it’s quicker to just get her drunk until her standards drop enough that they qualify. (Also, there’s plenty of people who go to clubs and bars just to drink and dance and have a good time. They, oddly, do not have a lot of trouble getting laid. Go figure.)
Well, once again, you did.
OH SNAP I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING
You ignored the nice guy. You used him for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy.
See, this is the part where I went “holy shit,” because normally in “I Used To Be A Nice Guy” type rants, this sentiment is only implied, a nasty little undercurrent of malicious envy and spite. But this guy comes right out and says it: if a guy acts friendly towards a girl, the girl has a moral duty to fuck him.
You laughed at his consideration and resented his devotion.
(I think he meant to use “erection” rather than “devotion” here.)
You valued the aloof boyfriend more than the attentive “just-a-” friend.
At least the aloof boyfriend would give the poor girl some space. Mister Nice Guy would be around all day if a girl let him. “Maybe she’ll decide to have sex with me in the next five minutes!”
Eventually, he took the hint and moved on with his life.
He moved on so much that years later he has to write nasty anonymous open letters on Craigslist, but he’s TOTALLY OVER IT YOU KNOW.
He probably came to realize, one day, that women aren’t really attracted to guys who hold doors open;
Because acting like it’s something special isn’t chivalrous. It’s retarded. I hold doors open for girls all the time. And guys. See, it’s like this: I am going through the door, so I hold it open for other people as they pass after me, or pull it open and let people go through first because the way we’re standing it’s convenient and polite to do so. And – guess what – they do the same for me!
Now, if I were going to act like some colossal twat and make a big scene out of opening the door, perhaps with a wave of my hand and a “M’lady” to punctuate it if I really just wanted to confirm that I was so starved for the attention of a woman that I would pretend I lived in Victorian times – maybe, just maybe, women would get skeeved out when I did it.
or make dinners just because;
But he’s already made it clear that he isn’t doing these things “just because.” Remember? He said he expects sex in exchange. It’s “reciprocating,” you know!
or buy you a Christmas gift that you mentioned, in passing, that you really wanted five months ago; or listen when you’re upset; or hold you when you cry.
Chris Rock has a really famous routine about how “n***as always want some credit for shit they supposed to do.” This is entirely equivalent. Mister Nice Guy here is complaining that he isn’t getting extra credit (and by “credit,” I of course mean “ass”) for being a tolerable human being. The same sentiment is found in how most of these rants usually have a “but in the end, you sluts end up with a Nice Guy” comment buried somewhere in the middle – the belief being, and this is core to how the Nice Guy operates, that eventually if he just keeps being Nice, one day he will have been sufficiently Nice to get a gorgeous woman to marry him and he can fuck her whenever he wants.
He came to realize that, if he wanted a woman like you, he’d have to act more like the boyfriend that you had. He probably cleaned up his look, started making some money, and generally acted like more of an asshole than he ever wanted to be.
I love how the author conjoins looking good and being successful with being an asshole. And, for that matter, he also conjoins looking good and being successful. As if there are no rich nerds. No, wait, there are plenty of rich nerds. Most of them are married, too. Go figure! In all seriousness, the amount of self-loathing in this post is just off the charts. The author hates himself, plainly and simply: he hates who he was, he hates who he’s claiming he’s become, and he’s projecting all of that onto – guess who – the ladies.
Fact is, now, he’s probably getting laid, and in a way, your ultimate rejection of him is to thank for that.
Because of you, he finally gave in and bought his first dose of rohypnol! If only you had fucked this loser, he would not now be a date rapist, so his crimes are on your hands, lady!
And I’m sorry that it took the complete absence of “nice guys” in your life for you to realize that you missed them and wanted them. Most women will only have a handful of nice guys stumble into their lives, if that.
That’s a horrific thing to say. Reversing the equation, I have known (er, in the non-Biblical sense) countless women of good character, high intelligence, exceptional grace, some wickedly funny to boot. Does this mean that those feminists of the moral-superiority-of-women school were correct all along? This is some radical shit this guy is writing here!
So, if you’re looking for a nice guy, here’s what you do:
1.) Build a time machine.
2.) Go back a few years and pull your head out of your ass.
3.) Take a look at what’s right in front of you and grab ahold of it.
YEAH I’M TALKING TO YOU DONNA McARTHUR OF SIOUX FALLS! YOU COULD HAVE HAD ALL OF THIS BUT INSTEAD YOU HAD TO GO AND MARRY CHAD JUST BECAUSE HE LIKED TO TAKE SHOWERS REGULARLY AND GOT HIMSELF A FANCY ACCOUNTING JOB! WELL NOW I’M IN MARKETING MAKING GOOD MONEY AND I GET LAID WHENEVER I FEEL LIKE IT AND I COULD COME OVER AND TAKE YOU AWAY FROM YOUR LIFE OF DRUDGERY AND TWO CHILDREN BUT I’M TOO BUSY LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOCA AND YOU COULD HAVE BEEN LIVING IT WITH ME BUT IT’S TOO LATE NOW AND I BET YOU’RE SORRY AREN’T YOU?
I suppose the other possibility is that you STILL don’t really want a nice guy, but you feel the social pressure to at least appear to have matured beyond your infantile taste in men.
“Hey, maybe it’s just me, but I bet there’s a possibility – juuuuuust a possibility – that not only are you stupid, but you’re a bitch too! What are the odds of that?”
In which case, you might be in luck, because the nice guy you claim to want has, in reality, shed his nice guy mantle and is out there looking to unleash his cynicism and resentment onto someone just like you.
If you were five years younger.
Given that this is being written by a Former Nice Guy, I’m not sure that “now I’m the guy who goes around pathetically trolling for younger women because older women don’t look like the girls in my porn collection” is exactly a step up, frankly.
So, please: either stop misrepresenting what you want, or own up to the fact that you’ve fucked yourself over. You’re getting older, after all. It’s time to excise the bullshit and deal with reality. You didn’t want a nice guy then, and he certainly doesn’t fucking want you, now.
Again: he doesn’t want you so much that he wrote this long-ass post on Craigslist! And anonymously, to boot, just so that if you read it, you wouldn’t know that it was him so maybe if you, I dunno, “accidentally” bumped into each other in the street someday, he could be all “oh, wow! It’s so good to see you” and then start following you around while you shopped again – that’s how much he doesn’t want you now!
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*WILD FUCKING APPLAUSE*
Oh Christ, seriously. I keep seeing all my Lonely Single Guy friends post shit like this on those fucking annoying MySpace bulletins. And you’re totally right. Granted, my LSG friends don’t actually expect to be rewarded for kindnesses with wild monkey love, but they do mope around and sigh a lot about how other guys get all the ladies, and are resentful because they never feel like it’ll be their turn for blissful happiness.
Well, guys, get off your asses. TALK TO GIRLS. Put yourself out there a little. I know you all have personalities; sell ‘em a little! Yes, rejection is a huge bitch and makes you listen to Simple Plan for five days straight, but you gotta dust yourself off once in a while. Read a good self-help book, just for a quickie ego boost. Ignore anything negative your parents are telling you.
Mostly, just keep doing what makes you happy and comfortable in your own skin, and then see where you can find like-minded women. I met my husband by sheer accident, on vacation in New Orleans six and a half years ago, just dancing the night away to horribly awesome 80’s music. And you know what I did when I saw that cute guy in velvet in the corner? WALKED UP TO HIM AND ASKED HIM TO DANCE. And look what happened.
I’m saying, guys, girls like a guy who is comfortable with themselves. Are you a gigantic nerd? Newsflash: so are girls. I KNOW, HOLY SHIT. I know I’m off the market and all, but look: I have an encyclopediac knowledge of Buffy and Angel. I have five longboxes of comics, mostly DC, within ten feet of me at this moment. One of them is actually overflowing. I’ve been watching MST3K for years on end. I swear like a fucking drunken whore. I speak fluent l33t. I am one of the most hardcore Final Fantasy fans you will ever meet, and I will own your ass and anyone else’s at Blitzball, FYI. Mountain Dew flows through my veins, I still play 8-bit Nintendo, I’m teaching myself Japanese, and damned if I don’t love He-Man.
I am an unabashed nerd/nice girl who has suffered through massive self-esteem issues. I do not look like a supermodel. I am the brain of a ten-year-old boy in a body with tits on it (and I think I’ve read doujinshi like that). And I am living proof that the shy, self-loathing “nice” people of the world can actually get off their asses, grow a pair of balls and not be afraid of talking to someone who is (if I may brag) dead sexy.
Just don’t be an asshole and expect shit. And always, always take the chance to say to a girl what you feel about her.
Notice also, that none of these losers actually pine after people that have an extra pound or two, or non perfect faces, or bad complexions? No, they’re all complaining that the HOTTIES don’t want their unattracive asses.
Runs both ways kids, if you want someone who’s in shape, GET IN SHAPE, if you want someone who smells nice, SMELL NICE. Have something in common with someone. Wipe the lamer dust off and get out and meet people. Hotness is self confidence MUCH more than it’s being pretty.
The key observation to make is, I think, that this “Former Nice Guy” was never in fact an actual nice guy, and the reason he didn’t get laid is that woman can tell.
In the words of a friend of mine, “Guys who are nice to you only with the hope, nay, expectation of fucking you aren’t nice guys, they’re creepy; that’s why they’re not getting laid and it’s why we don’t care.”
I’m pretty sure that women like fucking people who like them, and FNG does not seem to have ever liked women. Pity the straight male misogynist!
Oh man that was excellent.
You totally captured my reaction to that CL post. It’s strange I hear this complaint so often, but reading that made me want to tear my hair out in frustration. It’s insane that people can have that level of disconnect with the world around them.
It’s funny though, I remember feeling a bit like the whole Poor Nice Guy back when I was a hormonal 13yo boy with no social skills, but you know what? I grew up.
I developed friendships with girls not because I hoped that one day I might get to feel one of them up, but because hey, they were fun and interesting, and Shock! we had shit in common.
And then I became more comfortable in my own skin and more relaxed when it came to women, because surprise, surprise! most girls are just as insecure about themselves as I am. That was something else we had in common.
It’s called growing up, and it’s a little depressing that there are hordes of men out there who still think like the mal-adjusted teenage boy that I used to be. Except even more so.
Oh, Lordy.
You know, what really gets me is how often “Nice Guys”* will resent having to help someone through a shitty, abusive relationship. You know, if you like someone who’s in a shitty, abusive relationship? You should be trying like hell to get them out of that shitty, abusive relationship. Not because you want them to screw you, but because it’s shitty. And abusive.
But no! When a “Nice Guy” comforts a girl whose significant other treats them like dirt, they’ll do so without saying anything about the obvious badness of the relationship. Because, at best, their fear of rejection is more important to them than seeing that the girl is out of a bad situation, and at worst, they get off on the affirmation that the girl would be SO MUCH BETTER OFF with them, and deep down, they don’t actually want that affirmation to stop.
That’s what gets me. They would rather see a girl get hurt repeatedly than stick their neck out for the sake of helping her. Because it’s not about helping her; it’s about them getting laid.
Fucking gross.
Anyway, thanks for a better-worded comeback than I could ever think up – as per usual, you erudite bastard, you.
Nice one. The poor, misunderstood “nice guy” is probably my least favorite character in the world. There are others who are -worse-, but I like him the least. At some point, these fellas need to realize that being “good” is more important than being “nice”, and someone who can’t handle the idea of being honest about his intentions toward someone he’s spending time with falls short of that lofty goal.
–d
This is all very astute, but I’d go a step further and short-circuit his entire argument from the beginning.
His premise is “all women everywhere wish they could find a nice guy, but all women everywhere have cockblocked over all nice guys everywhere, so no nice guys are available.” So he’s assuming no less than four absolutes that I have to take issue with:
1) Maybe not all women WANT a nice guy. (We’ll set aside that the definition of “nice guy” is debatable.) For example, I’m sure some women either aren’t looking for commitment. Some people are so screwed up they seek out abusive relationships; gotta figure there’s some women in that set.
2) Maybe some women HAVEN’T scarred a nice guy for life. Look at it this way–nice guys are a subset of all males everywhere, so all women in total clearly outnumber them. It stands to reason that not every Molly Ringwald has a Duckie. So even if we adhere to this guy’s internal logic, there is some woman out there completely innocent of these charges, who of course would desperately like to embrace this former nice guy and heal his pain with some hot monkey love. (I suspect this is the real motive of the statement.)
3) Maybe some nice guys AREN’T fubar’ed by the love of a woman. Taking Former Nice Guy at his word, he was once not a Former Nice Guy but indeed a Nice Guy. So at that point, there was at least one Nice Guy in the world. Presumably new ones are born every day; they can’t all be getting passive-agressively rejected right out of the gate. When he says Nice Guys are off the market, he can really only say that for himself; the intended audience, instead of being distraught at squandering the resources of Nice Guys, can simply cross him off the list and go down to the next one.
4) Maybe some nice guys DO exist for the taking. This kind of goes back to the last point, but I interact with quite a few married women and they don’t describe their husbands as shallow or abusive or self-centered or inconsiderate. Odds are these men do in fact do all the things this guy says he wasn’t rewarded for. They got laid. And there’s probably (as in statistically likely) more where they came from. Our Former Nice Guy requires, for his manifesto to make sense, that all successful heterosexual copulations involve a male asshole, and that’s obviously not true.
So there you go. This guy’s hangups are ultimately irrelevant. The subset of all women who want a nice guy but have unwittingly damaged a nice guy can simply select from the subset of all nice guys who haven’t been damaged; and we can see from past data that doing so often works. Everyone wins. Except this guy.
On a related note, has anyone EVER heard a woman in real life actually say any variant of “Where have all the nice guys gone?”
I’m an ex “nice guy.” I used to do little things to try to demonstrate how I cared for people rather than clearly stating it, and I felt neglected when it wasn’t noticed. It’s not that I had an ulterior motive, but that I was trying to communicate using a different language.
When I recognized that the problem was that I wasn’t communicating and not that I wasn’t desireable, I *gasp* starting communicating effectively, and the situation immediately changed.
The difference between my experiences and the rant you’re dissecting is that I took accountability and changed what I was doing because it wasn’t effective. This guy is instead pointing fingers and claiming to be victimized because he’s unwilling to take responsibility for his actions.
If I might dissent slightly…
I agree that Former Nice Guy/Current Asshole On Craigslist is, in fact, a douchebag. Furthermore, I agree that hanging around a girl in the hopes of acquiring Boyfriend status is essentially futile. However, I have to say it annoys me when I hear a woman complain of a lack of nice guys.
The creepy types like FNG/CAOC are undesirable, of course. But why are emotionally abusive, self-absorbed pricks any better? Fuck, they should be even lower on the list. The truth of the matter is that women make just as many mistakes in the realm of romance.
Don’t stay with a guy that hurts you. Don’t stay with a guy that cheats. Don’t stay with a guy if he’s not what you want but you believe he’ll change for you.
And this is just a suggestion, but maybe you ought to let the soon-to-be-Former-Nice-Guys in your life know that they are not getting anywhere with the stupid routine. Tell them they don’t have a chance and, if you’re feeling really charitable, tell them where they went wrong. You don’t owe sex to anyone, but ridding the world of ignorance is everyone’s duty.
Wulf the Younger:
1. Well, yes. But that’s the behavior that’s on the table, here.
2. Emotionally abusive, self-absorbed pricks, interestingly, are more likely to actually make the effort to ask someone out. “Nice Guys” will not.
3. Staying with or leaving a guy that hurts you? Noooot always that simple. Admittedly, yes. It’s fucked up. It really, truly is. And stupid, oh god yes. But a woman who is staying with an abusive guy is in a much more vulnerable position than a creep who acts like a friend to her and thinks that this entitles him to sex from her.
The responsibility should not be on the person being manipulated to stop other people from trying to manipulate them (although yes, it is something people should know how to do anyway, because it happens). It should be on the people who are trying to manipulate them to NOT DO THAT SHIT.
Yes, by all means let the “Nice Guy” know, in no uncertain terms, that they’re not getting anywhere. But honestly, most “Nice Guys” know what they’re doing on some level. That’s why they make ultra-defensive arguments like this guy’s. That’s not ignorance. It’s assholery.
There are also nice guys who ask girls out. They just happen to be not-self-loathing-pricks.
MGK, I’m sort of annoyed that you *need* to write this kind of rebuttal, but you do, and I appreciate it.
All self-proclaimed “nice guys” are basically self-involved, creepy assholes. There are a few that aren’t all ulterior motives, but then those guys have absolutely no spine. They can’t stand up for themselves…they’re not really nice, they’re so afraid of rejection on even the most basic level, that they will do whatever another person wants for fear of alienating them. Why would I want to associate with either?
The cocky “jerk” has personality, self-confidence. I’ve known plenty of “jerks” who are perfectly civil and quite kind to people they actually know and like. A lot of the guys “nice guys” think are assholes are damn good boyfriends, in the end.
Waitaminnit– I know I’ve read that “Nice Guys don’t get the girl” rant before, probably at least a year ago. If not the same exact rant, then it must’ve been one from which this guy cribbed entire paragraphs; some of the verbiage sounds extremely familiar.
But of course, now that I want to prove an earlier version existed, Google fails me. -sigh-
I know plenty of Nice Guys, whom I consider to be a great catch, although I’m not interested in them myself. Some of them have a girlfriend, others are not yet interested in girls all that much. None of them are lapdogs, but some of them did get the ‘just a friend, not the lover’ treatment. I dated a nice guy for years. Although we split up, it was on good terms. Currently, I’m very interested in a Nice Guy, because he is a Nice Guy…
The bitterness is shocking to me…
See, here’s the thing- this doesn’t make the dude a nice guy. It makes him an asshole. I’ve had nice guy friends. And well, if you continue to do things with me, go places, hang out, and you don’t exhibit any signs you wnat to fuck me? Like saying “hey, you wanna?” I’m going to simply assume you are interested in the pleasures of my company.
Because if what you are doing is hanging out waiting to have sex with me, you are on the wrong track- If you been my platonic friend for long engouht, than you are my platonic friend. And I like my guys on the short, plump, and balding side.
And I don’t know a single woman who has the “nice guy” friend who hangs around, that they sob into when having isuses with the boyfriend. It doesn’t seem to work that way.
And really, what’s less attractive than posting a giant rant to craigslist explaining what a misogynist douchebag you are? Those asshole guys who are getting laid? Are charasmatic assholes. You? Are not merely an asshole, but are a bad writer to boot.
And I’m perfectly willing to fuck assholes. I’m not willing to fuck men who can’t put together a decent blog post, or find a place to post it better than a rant page on Craigslist. Man up, sign your name, and attach this to your own forum.
Having just stated my unwillingness to fuck bad writers, I committed a cardinal sin, and forgot to check the tenses on my own work.
Sorry about that.
I think I knew a few of these. Not that they did any of these things to me, because I wasn’t the hottest thing around, exactly. I saw one of them get up the courage and ask the girl out. She said yes. Turns our he was a creepy stalker guy who expected sex in exchange for being friendly. She wasn’t impressed.
Personally, if I guy comes shopping for clothes with me, I would expect some kind of ulterior motive. *I* don’t enjoy it, so QED, he is only there to try and catch a glimpse of me with my shirt off.
Quinctia:
You’re generalizing. I was a “nice guy,” and I didn’t have an ulterior motive. I was also VERY good at standing up for myself, and unquestionably had a spine. The problem is that I was rather inept at communicating what I wanted, and that led to me confusing people not understanding my subtle hints for rejection. Since getting out of that pattern, I continue to be a friendly and helpful person, so being nice is actually part of who I am rather than an act to get me laid.
Some troglodytic morons do expect sex as a reward for their actions, but that’s hardly limited to “nice guys,” and I’m proof that it doesn’t apply to all “nice guys.”
Which is not to say the guy who posted this drivel on craigslist isn’t an embittered asshole, because he is. He’s blaming women as a whole for his own inability to communicate what he wants rather than taking responsibility and changing what he’s doing. My point is that accusing every male who superficially acts the same way of having the same motives is just as unfair as his attack against women in the first place.
Yah, I’d like to take issue with his premise…. srsly, who the hell wants a “nice guy”? The only guys I know who get labeled “nice guy” are the ones who lack any more intreguing qualities, and have been defaulted down the ladder to “nice”.
I want smart, interesting, provocative and challenging men, not nice ones. Actually, nice ones are pretty likely to think I’m a real asshole (fairly) – I prefer ones who can share contempt with me.
This dude and millions like him need to watch Tao of Steve.
Charlotte is really on about “nice guys” being basically unremarkable. I don’t feel like I’m a nice guy, and we’re still living together after four years.
It’s not ever about being “nice.” It’s about not being creepy and never feeling like you’re owed something.
Oh thank you. I laughed out loud.
Bra-frikking-vo.
I am a quite legitimate Nice Guy. As MGK said, I open doors for everyone because it’s polite. And I’ve had close girl friends that I liked. My best friend in high school is asked out numerous times, starting at age 17. (I was something of a late bloomer, I suppose.) She always said no, and we actually had some fun point-counterpoint conversations regarding the possibility of us dating. But she knew I liked her, and she knew I was actually hanging out with her because I enjoyed her company, not because I expected sex.
Through the years, I received no after no after no. But I ALWAYS tried. My dating mantra was “No one ever gained anything by not trying.” (This eventually evolved into the slightly more cynical but much more witty “I’d rather be a failure than a coward”) The only girl I had an eye for that I never tried for had a boyfriend she was quite happy with. And I still let her know i thought she was keen.
Then one day, when I was 23, a girl said yes. We went on 3 dates, and she said that I was severely romantic, and a surprisingly good kisser. But she was soon to be going to grad school, and didn’t want to be in a relationship. Okay, fine.
Not long after, I tried again. Failure. Then again… SUCCESS! Second date, third… CONTINUED SUCCESS! And now I have a girlfriend, she’s superhot, and I am a happy nice guy. The lessons to be learned?
1) Be actually nice. For all the rejection I received over those 6 years, all of the girls actually liked me as a person, and wanted to hang out with me.
2) Find a girl you ACTUALLY like. I have never felt any urge to date a girl that I haven’t already spent quality time with. I mean, why follow her when she’s shopping if that’s not what you enjoy? I met my lady when we were working as actors at a Renaissance Faire.
3) Act at the Renaissance Faire. (Metaphorically) According to my lady, I was considered pretty much the hotness there, because the girls there were the sort to value a quick-witted, polite, nerdy fellow. So seek out the company of people you gel with. Don’t just go to the bar and assume that hot girls want to fuck you if you’re nice to them. It’s no coincidence that a number of happy couples have come out of the Faire.
Oh, and I forgot to proofread. Meant to add that I have a personality outside of “Nice”, and I let everyone see it. The above mentioned “Nice guy” most likely suppresses his personality, assuming that the women find it unattractive, and puts forth the creepy, artificial “Nice guy” persona.
God, this guy sounds like he belongs on an ‘unbiased’ news show that only complains about the Government or the War on Iraq. You know, because it’s so ‘unbiased.’
Seriously, I doubt this guy was even ‘nice’ in the first place – especially considering he was acting like a complete stalker rather than as a friend. Freaking creepy, if you ask me. If you’re a friend, you’re a friend. If you want to grow into a more mature relationship, you talk about it and bring it up – like I did with my friend of almost three years about perhaps going out on a date.
Guess what? Not only did she say ’sure, let’s try it out,’ but it’s about 5 years later and we’re still together – albeit in a long-distance relationship at the moment.
Girls don’t like guys who sit at their computer and bitch and moan about how life isn’t fair. They like people who have a personality and can actually talk with them – even if it’s only about nerdy things, it could be about nerdy things they have in common at the very least.
Such as MST3K, Red Dwarf, anime or video games – like in my own relationship. She may not be too fond of Star Trek, but her dad is…
One of the things that’s been nagging me about this letter: he keeps going on and on and on about making fucking baked goods for the phantom object of his unstated affections, and buying her goddamn earrings she liked, and cooing into her hair into the early hours of dawn.
When the hell does that happen, outside of a relationship?
I mean, if a woman goes to a man’s home; and the man says, “I made dinner for us”; it seems like his expectation is there on the table. This is not to agree with his rant; rather, I mean that it sounds like he got into lots of pre-relationships and was consistently too chickenshit to seal the deal. If a woman hangs around for a couple weeks or a month of that, well who can blame her if she leaves when no further move on his part is forthcoming?
But it’s probably futile to try to examine this screeching complaint logically, isn’t it? What with all the “you told your girlfriends these things when I wasn’t around,” and the “now I’m forced – forced! – to act like an asshole.”
This is some guy with no social history beyond watching old “Growing Pains” episodes, isn’t it.
Shorter version:
“I do things because I expect a reward” =/= “nice,” in the actual sense of the word
One of the key facets of being genuinely nice is NOT DECLARING THAT YOU ARE. It’s sorta like being proud about your humility, you know?
Setting aside “Is he/ Isn’t he” debate, and the flaws in the logic and suchlike…
… but DAMN, I just have to admire his One Perfect Moment of Anger there. There is a certain dark allure to a well-vented spleen, and I can respect his passion without agreeing with his agenda.
As a propaganda piece, it’s fantastically written.
And then there are mid-20s losers who still live in their parents’ basements who are terrified because of all this…all this.
Must be a mental impairment or something, is my belief.
If this blog were Mortal Kombat, I think this post would be the equivalent of ripping a guy’s spine out and showing it to him, while a big booming voice says, “MGK wins. FATALITY.”
Seriously, that rant is a perfect example of a phenomenon common among men with no social skills, which I have come to call, “All women are bitches…and why won’t they go out with me?” Guys like this do “the right things” to get a woman to like them so they can have sex with them, and then are completely confused by the fact that the woman doesn’t. When, in fact, the woman in question is actually smart and good at picking up signals, and can tell very clearly that the guy is only interested in her as a receptacle for his bodily fluids, and that all the “liking her” stuff is just pretense. So she gets the hell away from him. He thinks, “Well, women just don’t like guys who do nice things for them,” and blames women for being so damn fickle. So his next would-be girlfriend can not only detect the insincerity and inabilty to actual deal with her as a human being, she can also detect simmering misogyny just under the surface. So she gets the hell away from him. Which makes things worse and worse, leading into a death spiral that can only end with the guy posting angry gibberish on Craigslist.
Actual nice guys usually wind up with good women, even if they are shy, because if they are really nice and friendly to everyone they meet for non-ulterior motives, eventually they’re going to meet a woman who likes nice guys and is willing to make the first move. But anyone can tell a screaming loser like this from a mile away.
NewtypeS3 said:
God, this guy sounds like he belongs on an ‘unbiased’ news show that only complains about the Government or the War on Iraq. You know, because it’s so ‘unbiased.’
What is that, Bizarro Fox News?
That rant is totally the product of male entitlement. Every dude, no matter how much they don’t bath or how stupid they act in public or how selfish they are, is totally entitled to ” his fair share ” of some woman’s body. at least in his own head. She’s attractive, so obviously her attractiveness belongs to him, and any other guy who wants a piece of it, and she’s a bitch for not understanding that. What’s she entitled to ? The pleasure of the entitled guy’s company I guess. Whole thought process is gross.
You rock, so hard.
Thank you. Women may lament that there’s no nice guys anymore, but they are also not speaking for “all women” when they whine, so stop blaming ALL women. Thank you so much for writing this.
This post rocks so much! I prefer geeky guys over nice guys myself, as most geeks tend to be nice AND they’re too busy leveling up to go on shopping trips or bake good “for no reason,” but I have a couple of friends I fear might start down the “Nice Guy” path, so I’ma forward this along to them. Thank you! Truly, this is a future law degree already put to good use. *beam*
Word. And then Nice Guys make women more likely to be nasty to perfectly Good Guys who want to be friends, because we assume they’re NGs… so really, if women are seeing a lack of appealing men to be friends with and have sex with, it’s because of the Nice Guys. Ha.
I can’t really say anything better than what has been said previously, but I feel the deep need to do so anyway. What a maroon. Guys like that make me want to nail my vagina shut, just in case.
Well said!
Honestly, that’s what I love about my nice guy boyfriend. He had the guts to actually tell me he had feelings for me, despite the fact that I would probably shoot him down.
I like women you see, and never tried to hide that.
Damn those interwebs and their interaction without bodies. Makes a girl question her sexuality, really… 5 years going strong! Maybe males aren’t that bad after all…
But regardless of that, the whole post just reeks of this horrible sex-trade thing. I mean seriously, just the notion of doing things for someone else just to get together is sickening. I wonder if he would feel the same about his male friends, when he listened to them bitch about their girlfriends or lack thereoff, or went shopping with them.
I mean really, the thing that annoys me the most is the fact that it implies that men and women can’t hang out together and be friends, it is all a trade of favours vs teh sex.
I am embarrassed by how attractive I find you right now.
I have to steer clear of Craigslist most days, because even just the “Best Of” posts have these land mines in them. They depress me; I despair for the people who write them. How can you hate “women” (such a stable and easily summarized group of people!) so much? It’s a sad and rather boring view of the world.
As a side note, a lot of those Nice Guys who do so much for that one woman are just as ungracious to their other female friends, who they don’t want to bone. A few of my guy friends would whine about a girl who wasn’t interested in them to me for hours; I wasn’t like them, and I listened out of friendship, but it galled me sometimes how they didn’t notice the similarity.
Anyway – excellent response. I really enjoyed reading it, and it made me feel a whole hell of a lot better than Craigslist does.
Well, Jess, I am extraordinarily beautiful.
And…yes, MGK has rolled a natural 20. MGK, the Nice Guy is taken completely by surprise. Your +5 Sword of Pwning completely severs his head, which unfortunately is only temporarily disabling and does not impair his ability to post to Craigslist. However, since you’ve demonstrated your awareness that women are human beings, he now considers you to be a homosexual and therefore not a threat to his territory. And, of course, he has no treasure, carrying only his beloved pile of horseshit. Do you want to attack again, or move on?
Marry me, I’m not even kidding.
Aardy — I found someone complaining about that one 8 days before it was posted at Craig’s list. And even then it looked eerily familiar to me, I think its a been an email forward a few times. http://brokenporcelaindoll.blog.co.uk/2007/11/11/how_the_fook_do_i_approach_this~3277473
Charlotte — Every guy should be made to watch the Tao of Steve before getting to High School. They can use that block of time in middle school when the girls are separated from them and learning about feminine hygiene.
I love you.
Although I hate these kind of guys, I know a guy just like this and he keeps saying “Girls don’t want guys like me they want idiots” The guy is the most boring guy in the world, he is ugly, antisocial and dresses like a grandad, he is not ever going to be anything more than “a weird guy” to any girl at this rate. On the other hand I thought like this until meeting my current girlfriend. The problem is guys who are just genuinly trying to be nice can get grating, nobody likes to be called 4 times a day by some insufferable jackass who just goes on and on about how they want to be with you forever, and I learnt that the hard way. So you don’t have to be jackassy, but just tone it down a bit, geez.
Although I have heard a girl say “Why don’t i meet any nice guys” who is a wonderful example of this, if she ever met a nice guy she would vomit on him then fuck some other guy who offered her weed.
The guy is the most boring guy in the world, he is ugly, antisocial and dresses like a grandad, he is not ever going to be anything more than “a weird guy” to any girl at this rate.
None of those things are reasons to hate him, though. Have you tried giving him any of the advice posted here without putting him down?
I’ve been with the same “jerk” for over thirteen years (I know he is a “jerk”; several Nice Guys I knew in high school told me so). Over the course of our relationship, he’s done the following:
Held my hair back while I puked my guts out, and cleaned up the toilet afterwards.
Took my incurably ill cat to the vet when I couldn’t, and held her while she died.
Made countless numbers of dinners, candle-lit and otherwise.
Nursemaided me after gall bladder surgery for a whole week’s worth of fetching popsicles, books, cats, laptops, etc. from the first floor.
Attended family functions because I asked him to be there, even though many members of my family don’t like him.
There’s more, of course, but I think that’s enough to make my point. But this is the guy who’s still a “jerk”, presumably because he has strong opinions, is charming and flirtatious, and goes after what he wants. Do we fight? Of course! If passions don’t rise on occasion, you don’t have a relationship, you have a roommate. It seems to me that these “nice guys” just love to focus on the bad things that they can see from the outside. “HE made her cry; see what a jerk he is? I would never do that!” And he probably wouldn’t; the “nice guy” approach would be to passive-aggressively pout whenever his pedestaled goddess did something that he didn’t like, instead of doing something as constructive as actually throwing his feelings on the table where they can be dealt with by everyone. Martyrdom is the “nice guy”’s weapon of choice, and a lot of times the “jerks” are every guy who isn’t single.
Oh, and for the record? My “jerk” and I started dated when I was sixteen. The first time I had official, “all the way” penetration intercourse? I was twenty, because that was when I decided that I was emotionally ready and able to deal with any consequences. Do the math and tell me that I “owe” YOU favors for condescending to hold a door open for me.
Wow. You get it. …That’s actually really hot, I think. And well-said.
For a long time, I haven’t been sure how to characterize the kinds of guys who feel ‘creepy’ to me– but this is -it-. It’s that feeling that everything a person does for you, they do with the supposition that they can put it on your ‘tab’, and then, sooner or later, you have to pay up, with interest even. Sincerity’s such a turn-on, but so hard to find sometimes.
Also, this was the worst of it all:
You ignored the nice guy. You used him for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy.
Huh. I had no idea that if I was offered a hug by one of my male friends, I should politely refuse, since it would be taking advantage of him if I didn’t whore myself out afterwards. I’ll put it in a memo, so I can interact correctly with him, with all proper procedures. Return embrace with embrace. Second embrace should lose panties.
It’s a shame that the letter-writer is anonymous; names make people so much easier to avoid.
Chris, you were thinking of Le Chateau.
Otherwise, spot on.
- Chris
God, that man is probably out raping someone he feels cheated him out of a fuck when he paid for dinner and she just said “thanks”.
You really did call it. I’ve seen this happen with some of my friends. My stalky boy experiences were different– one was actually very sweet, which made me feel bad about turning him down, but he had absolutly no self confidence and I wanted to have fun on a date, not spend hours trying to reassure him that I think he’s a good person. I’m not one of those chicks who goes ga-ga over boys who are projects. In fact, I dont know any woman who is.
The line between sensitive guy and annoying moper is not as fine as some would like us to believe. In fact, its not so much a line as a canyon.
[...] it’s been getting a great deal of attention from various forums, including Smart Bitches and MightyGodKing: “What Happened to All the Nice Guys?” [Date: 2007-11-19, 3:52AM [...]
Salmo, the problem with telling these guys to find a girl they actually like is that Nice Guys don’t actually *like* women. They see them as little better than Fleshlights with an extra orifice.
To them, women are not people. They’re a means to an end – his orgasm. Nothing else matters.
… and your rebuttal is hereby guaranteed to get you more nooky than the Nice Guy has ever received in his entire life.
Thud. You know, this exact issue has plagued me for years. The guy in question was my nice (not puppy dog-like) friend. We did concerts, shopping, dinners, etc. I found a boyfriend, he found fury and “moved on.” Did I use him for solace? I guess we all use friends to prop us up, fill our down time, etc., but it’s reciprocal. I never wanted him, I don’t want him now, I don’t regret not having sex with him (it never occured to me to do so as I was not attracted to him, and I’m not a prostitute), and I’m happily married to the “other nice guy,” to whom I am attracted.
Thank you for freeing me from an elusive kind of guilt I almost forgot I carried around.
I found a boyfriend, he found fury and “moved on.”
“Fury.” That’s fucked up.
I don’t like to think of anybody as a loser because of their appearance or job, but other than that I agree with MGK on everything, including that if you don’t bother to tell the person you are interested in how you feel, you can’t realistically expect anything to happen. Maybe it will, but don’t bet on it.
Some of these Nice Guys are undoubtedly assholes who are delusional enough to think that being nice entitles them to sex. OTOH, some of ‘em might just not know how to approach women even at their age (which is sad), and before blasting them I’d wanna give them the advice that Queen Anthai did in the very first comment and see if they took it. But there’s absolutely no call for hating the woman in that situation, total agreement here.
Fantastic, insightful post. Since the beginning, my life has been a series of being in situations where the environment has a high number of females in proportion to males (having a little sister and stay-at-home mother, being in honors classes at a co-ed school, being on swim teams and taking art classes, working as a server in a restaurant), and I suppose I’ve been forced early on to learn that females are people, interesting in their own right, and not objects that are entitled to be subjected willy-nilly to romantic and sexual entrendes from me. So it’s always a shock to see those who are still stuck in a “women are sexual vending machines” mode of thinking, and always a pleasure to see such Nice Guys taken down.
You are a very wonderful and awesome individual. Also, the following: “Doesn’t he know that chicks dig a dude with mad grammar skills? They are after me all the time to show me how I cleft a gerund, it makes them fucking swoon, it does.” completely rocked my socks off. I love you.
Hit the nail on the head. This guy isn’t a “nice guy”, he’s a “creepy douchebag”.
Who the fuck thinks opening doors for girls is going to get them any action at all? Jebus, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day. I don’t think there’s a woman alive who gets wet at the idea of some creepy guy in a sweater vest holding a god damn door open. We all know he’s holding the door open so he can look at her ass as she walks ahead of him.
Can I just say that you rock? Yes, really!
In all honesty, I don’t think I’ve ever had a “nice guy” platonic friendship of any sort. Maybe I was too much of a bookwork or something, but close friendships were far and few between during high school and college.
When someone uses the word “nice” to describe themselves, I grimace, because, to me, nice=doormat. No woman wants a doormat.
Being kind, polite, caring, and generous are not in the same field as “nice.”
I also raised my eyebrows when FNG professed his ardent interest in shopping with his object of sexual interest.
Huh? In nearly 10 years of marriage and 2 years of courtship, the only shopping I’ve done with my husband is for furniture, appliances, and the occasional trip together to the grocery store.
If he ever professed an interest in going to the mall with me (especially if I was shoe shopping); I would be compelled to do one of two things: I would either check him for a fever or ask him if he’s gay.
I knew a guy like this. He was of the opinion that buying dinner and a movie entitled one to sex. He and I were “friends” of the Platonic sort, and I had to explain to him numerous times that buying stuff for a woman doesn’t obligate her to have sex. This isn’t a quid pro quo business transaction and she is not a prostitute whose services are being prepaid.
I’ve seen this rant in a Dear Abby column several years ago. Dear Abby cheered him on with an admonition to the ladies to pay attention.
It creeped me out then and it creeps me out now. Stalkers are not nice guys. Guys who think all women are prostitutes are not nice guys. Guys who think that all women should be available to any man for the asking and that sex is not on a case by case basis are not nice guys.
I loved your dismantling of that creep’s rant. You are a gentleman, not a faux Nice Guy (TM).
I seriously want you to cleft some gerunds right now.
Er. And to respond to the post: awesome.
seriously, I would bone you for like fifteen years without pause based only on this post
I’d also like to add that maybe some women go for “jerks” because we just want to have sex with someone who seems to know what he is doing. Yes that’s right – women can be shallow and all about the sex as well. And if he is a jerk you don’t have to worry about hurting his feelings either. I just couldn’t stomach having exploratory casual sex with the guy who told me that I was the sun on his sky and the jewel in the ethiopian’s ear (actual qoute – he got it from Romeo and Juliet).
About 25 years ago, while I was in college, I had a conversation with a guy I had known slightly in high school who was now working behind the counter at the local movie rental place. I don’t remember why he started lamenting to me that women just weren’t interested in Nice Guys, that they only wanted to date jerks, but he did, and I…blinked at him. I blinked through my desire to ask him if he’d considered losing 50 lbs, getting a good job and learning to dress; I blinked through my curiosity as to whether he’d ever asked out a fat girl, or plain girl, or if all of these elusive, misguided objects of his desire were actually hot out of all proportion to his own less attractive self; I took my video and walked away, mildly creeped out. I’m still not sure why some guys are so certain that being “nice” and being at all attractive are mutually exclusive–maybe because, lacking one, they want to believe they’ve cornered the market on the other. Um, no. Maybe you, too, could be both nice and attractive to women, Nice Guy, if you put a little effort into it. If you were actually a nice guy, that is, and not an entitled, passive-aggressive asshole.
What creeps me out more than this fucknugget on CL is the fact that the blogs you linked to up above there are full of other fucknuggets who’re wholeheartedly agreeing with this guy. It’s like they’re coming out of the freaking woodwork now that they’ve got something to rally around. Jesus – yes, also, all women who ignore Nice Guys are white and if you want some real submissive pussy you should date an Asian girl! This – this! – is why I eye every white guy with a Chinese tattoo on his arm who comes up to me in a bar with suspicion, why ‘nice’ guys make my skin crawl when they tell me how they like traditional girls (I mean what). I – it is frightening that there are guys out there who target women of a particular ethnicity specifically to ease their own egos, just because their skin colour comes with expected ‘benefits’.
Yes, because we’re all delicate Oriental lotus flowers aching to practise our secret Eastern love techniques on you because we love the white manmeat (yeah, the current population of China says ‘no’; also, see: Japan, yaoi). That’s not being ‘nice’, that’s being a racist self-entitled piece of ratshit.
Uh, sorry to hijack your post. I think I want ‘cleft a gerund’ on a tshirt now. Swoon.
MGK, I love your brain.
Like, kind of a whole lot right now.
“Yes, because we’re all delicate Oriental lotus flowers aching to practise our secret Eastern love techniques on you”
Ancient Chinese secret, huh?…
This guy is the guy who, in all seriousness, is a date rapist to the girls who say yes to him or who he picks up drunk in a bar. The part where he admits to being out, trolling to vent his ‘newly found’ cynacism on sone young, inexperienced gullible girl? Straight up screams serial date rapist to me.
Thanks for the replies. It’s nice to have men point out the fallacies of these kinds of arguments. When I do it, people call me a “feminazi.”
That was brilliant!
Salmo, well stated, and wholly agreed with. I’m in about the same boat, right down to the Renaissance Faires. To all nice guys, cultivate patience. Eventually you’ll run into someone who wants exactly what you are, and that’s a hell of a lot more satisfying than changing who you are to attract someone.
That was beyond excellent. Thank you.
…would you please cleft me a gerund now? I haven’t had a good swoon in a few days.
Lately I’ve read more and more complaints like these from “Nice Guys” on MySpace, LJ and Blogspot, and I have to state the obvious: It doesn’t matter how “nice” and “accomodating” you are to a woman, or how “witty” and “intelligent” you are – if you’re a grown man living with your parents who has a crap, dead-end job, you’d have to miraculously beautiful and charming to attract any woman (and I’m talking Brad Pitt pretty). So I say: get your own place, find a decent job, wash, shave, brush your teeth, lose weight, dress in clean, plain clothes and show some interest in the women you admire. Guess what: THIS WILL GET YOU LAID. THIS WILL GET YOU A GIRLFRIEND. Just standing in her line of sight WILL NOT DO IT. And just being a het male will not do it anymore — you have to refine and maintain the whole package.
And — oh, yeah — a little thing called “chemistry” often comes into play here. Sometimes no matter how clean and nice and attentive and wonderful you are, if the object of your affection feels no “zing” while in your presence, she just doesn’t feel it. It’s no one’s fault – certainly NOT hers. It’s a mystery. Smart people keep perservering until they do feel it reciprocally with someone.
Hear hear. A friend of mine, who I consider to be a nice guy, albeit, one with talent, smarts, charm and good looks, sent me the original, slightly less nasty version that several people have mentioned, in email once and I was like ‘whut?’. I dated him for a while and found him to be a good boyfriend, but he seemed to lack nerve. We never fought, there was no passion. In the end we had an amicable break up and are still friends. He still tells me once in a while that he doesn’t’ have girl friends and isn’t getting laid. I don’t really know how to help him with this. He has a good job, goes to school, his own car, though admittedly still lives with his folks.. but he is cute, charming, funny, etc. I slept with him, after all. He is considerate and attentive in bed, but unsure of himself and his size, which I’ve noticed many guys are very concerned about. For some reason men think if they have a big todger, they are immediately great at sex. Most women I’ve talked to are much less concerned about size, so much as they are ability to use what is at hand. If you can get her off, and yourself in the process, the size of you todger becomes irrelevant. Most women, though I know of at least one who claims to enjoy huge men, (pain is love, to her at least), cringe at the idea of a guy trying to cram something huge in something we know is so small. How to let the rest of the world in on this remains as yet a mystery to me.
Ink
I am so very grateful to hear *men* seeing through the passive-aggressive, self-justifying crap driveled by the CL guy – it gives me some hope for humanity, even in the face of all the sick jerks who *also* can’t see past their own crotches to acknowledge just how self-absorbed this loser is. It is horrifying to see anyone who equates “doing things others deem nice in order to get laid” with “nice” (Imagine these same male cheerleaders if some woman tried the same trick with them, but for their money…?). Even more frightening is the fact that I have a 10 year old daughter who will have to go through all this… But, in the end, I really have to publicly give thanks for my TRULY nice husband of over 14 years: he is G-d’s personal gift to me, and things like this make me cherish him all the more.
MGK, my gerund awaits your clefting skills. You big non-Nice Guy, you.
*swoon*
Still writing great stuff, I see.
I’m a true Former Nice Guy, in the sense that I don’t do this kind of stupid shit anymore. I consider it part of my somewhat delayed and very messy adolescence.
Oh, yeah, I remember 2 guys who this could have been. Was he the one I was convinced was gay because he always wanted to go on those girly shopping trips? Or was he the one I had to sic my mother’s ex mafia boyfriend on when he ignored the restraining orders from me, my roommate and several friends.
I’ve never actually heard of, let alone experienced, a friendship like the one FNG is describing, with the guy as shopping partner/shoulder to cry on. However, I have seen them in lots of films, usually with musical montages, and in all the ones I can think of the girl is under the impression that the guy is gay (”Chuck and Larry” comes to mind). So talking about her boyfriend while trying on clothes together? Not really marketing yourself to your target demographic. And perhaps finding one’s modus operandi in cheesy films is not the smartest thing, either.
[...] It turns out “Nice Guys” are really just passive-agressive assholes who will never get laid because women see right through them. Duh. Ldragoon sets it up with an amazing illustration, and the MightyGodKing spikes it right into the sand. [...]
I can pick apart this guy’s argument right away.
“What happened to all the nice guys?”
Women never ask this. Women ask “Where are all the attractive, intelligent, interesting, charming, gainfully employed, self-confident, nice guys?”
So, you see, Former Nice Guy, one out of seven will not get you pussy. =D
You can cleft my gerund any day.
Seriously, male feminists–and really, anyone who just thinks people like the “Nice Guy” who posted that is a doucehbag is a feminist–are hot.
It’s not hard. It’s really not that hard to impress a girl. It just takes some work. It might not work out in the end, you might not click like you hoped, but it’s not that hard to woo one enough for them to give you a shot.
And girls can be on the other end. I have. I’ve been the supportive friend, I’ve been the ones that said, “Listen, she is treating you very badly. I wouldn’t. Just throwing that out there. I’ll be your friend either way.” It didn’t work out between us, but in the end he was away from the psychobitch at least, so I’m grateful for that, and last I heard he was doing okay. And that was what I wanted–whether it was with me or not, I wanted him to be happy.
There is a different between being nice for the sake of being nice, being a friend for the sake of being a friend, and then being a dickless little dillweed faking being nice to get sex.
Thank you for this. You saved me valuable time I might’ve spent mocking it myself.
The Nice Guy does have a point. While he himself is very probably an asshole with wildly unrealistic expectations and a misogynist attitude there quite a lot people of both sexes out there with considerable issues from a past relationship and there are enough abusive, manipulative women around who will keep a nice guy handy, giving him just enough hope and mixed signal to make sure the already low probability of him forcing a decision stays zero and taking a disproportionate share of the benefits of the relationship. Heck some do it unintentionally, genuinely unaware of the nice guy’s feelings. People of either sex are being mean to other people all the time for all sorts of reasons and a tiny part of that causes genuine nice guys changing because they wrongly assume it’s them and not the woman’s fault. (Of course, at the same time, lots of former nice guy change back and some bona fide pigs turn good because they finally end up in a healthy, loving and trusting relationship.)
Which is a long winded way of saying, yeah, the guy’s probably a dick, but IMO there’s a decent chance he just had some bad experiences.
No, Markus, he’s definitely a dick. What he describes is *him* being abusive and manipulative in the hopes of getting laid, not a woman taking advantage of him. Standing around grinning intensely and hoping women will suddenly start ripping off your clothes is passive-aggressive bullshit, not “nice.” And “forcing a decision”–what is that? You’re sounding a little “nice guy” there yourself.
I was talking about asking for a definitive answer whether anything more intimate than friendship is going to happen between people. Which sometimes isn’t necessary one way or the other, sometimes is misunderstood one way or the other and in some cases is deliberately keep unclear. Some cases of that subset are straight up abusive, others, while still deliberate, are more motivated by a false sense of politeness, propriety, third party concerns etc. I’ve seen people of both sexes keep a partner in deliberate (or at least culpable) uncertainty, except with guys the benefits are more often physical. It’s incredibly common and frequently involves measures to ensure decisive questions are not asked, “decisions not forced” as i put it earlier. If you’re really unfamiliar, ask away.
And “he’s definitely a dick” – what is that? Do you know this guy at all? I mean, beyond having read a single rant of his on the internet? You’re sounding very much like a judgemental, stuck-up asshole there yourself, which, incidentally I am pointing out because there’s nothing that ensures constructive dialogue over a disagreement or a misunderstanding than jumping on single turn of phrase in lieu of the gist and pairing what could be a legitimate question with an underhanded insult. I know, you put a question mark behind it, and that makes all the difference in the world.
I’d say that the anonymous writer (and this certainly has a feel like it’s been glossed by more than one redactor) has one and only one valid point: Women who complain that there aren’t any “nice guys” out there probably aren’t in touch with what they want in a “nice guy,” or are unwilling to change themselves to attract one that meet her definition of the same. That is as bad as, say, a “nice guy” who then becomes a not-so-nice whiner that he can’t find a true relationship. (Without, apparently, having actually ASKED the object of his affections for one.)
That aside, yeah, this writer has big-time issues. Beginning with confusing “niceness” as an absolutely objective black-or-white quality (when it is, in fact, almost always a subjective quality of degree or a comparative.) It goes from there to exhibiting basic courtesy and basic friendship as something expected to be outstanding. It leads from there into horribly confusing emotional intimacy with physical intimacy, and that the former necessitates the latter in his worldview. Finally, and most damningly, he seems to be completely oblivious that there actually ARE such things as platonic male-female relationships. And if you find yourself in one (male or female,) and want it to go further than just platonic friendship, it’s YOUR responsibility to find out if the other is interested. And then respect that decision either way.
@markus: You have a point that this guy might have simply been damaged by previous relationships or any other number of issues. But he certainly also believes that being “nice” implies that the object of his affection should therefore reciprocate the way he expects. Under the surface of it he’s just as desirous of controlling his relationships as the ones he accuses as being “not nice” guys. So maybe he was never one in the first place.
All I can say is, thank God I got over what this guy thinks a “nice guy” is – in sufficient time to have met the woman I’m married to now and whom I work my hardest for to earn the privilege of being with her until one of us dies. And yet, somehow, I still manage to be as nice as I can to others. All others, male and female. Imagine that.
Hey MGK – do you mind if I cut/paste this response the CL posters who use this? tx!!!!
Most of what I would say has already been said, and phrased better than I could phrase it. So instead, I will simply say “You, sir! Yes YOU! YOU are my hero!”
Can I just repeat all the applause?
Despite having enjoyed your LJ posts re: comics at some point (I remember reading them but not when), I never saw this post before someone linked it today. But it cracked me up and it’s right on the money re: nice guys. Thanks for writing it and for pointing out so clearly why this particular attitude of men is ridiculous.
I had a friend once (years ago, before I’d heard the label “Nice Guy” who was a variant of the Nice Guy here. No, he didn’t shop with me, but he passively-agressively hinted that maybe he wanted to go out sometime, without ever saying it. And I made it clear I understood and wasn’t interested, but he kept doing it. And then I’d say something (not complaining, just some neutral statement) about my boyfriend, and he’d make some comparison indicating that he’d be the better guy for me, again without really saying it. *rolls eyes* The reason I continued to be friends with him was because, unlike the prototypical Nice Guy, he actually was a lot of fun and an interesting person, and didn’t indulge in the above behavior enough to make it so annoying as to overshadow the good parts of his personality.
This is the best part, though. After I was not with Boyfriend anymore, and was still friends with Nice Guy, he asked me what, in my opinion, would make him a more attractive person to women (read: women like me). So I told him. I said, “You aren’t unattractive – but you need to exercise, stand up straight, dress better, and lose the sideburns. And THEN you have to work on not being so mean to people, particularly on first meeting them (he was. Not to me, but he made biting remarks to so many other people that he was known for it). And he went, basically, “Oh, is that all? But that’s just little stuff.” NO IT’S NOT. It’s stuff that projects an image of oneself that isn’t appealing to others. *sigh* He didn’t get that for years.
Mad grammar skills?!?!? *SWOON*
You are truly brilliant. See, all you had to do to impress me was competently shoot down some prat’s argument. I think I love you.
marry me. seriously.
i despise ‘nice guys’.
I just happened to realize this a few days ago, mate. And I totally congratulate you for that.
After 3 nonexistent years of middle school, I just wanted to make friends and be happy like a normal person. I was just being myself with the guys, and it worked. However, it wasn’t until I was 17 that I started to become interested in girls. Only problem was, it was like those 6th grade kids who just became interested in girls because they just got their first boner while staring at her classmates’ growing tits. I didn’t wanted to just hang out with them without ruling out the possibility of something a little bit more intimate; I just wanted to fuck them. But at an age where everybody is supposed to having gotten over it, nobody ever made me see the error of my ways, and I had no fucking clue on what to do. So I played the fake nice guy card.
I kept playing it during my first three college years, blind to the truth that girls can see through the ways of a nice guy who just wants to fuck a girl. My ultimate goal was always, always, getting laid. I entered a 3-year-long stage of self-deception. I deceived myself into firmly believing that I liked girls for their personality, but the truth was that I liked girls only and exclusively for their body. I used to claim that I didn’t cared much about a girl’s body, but coincidentally, I was only willing to hang out with the sexiest girls in college. The fact that my first sexual experience was at a strip club really didn’t help; it embedded in my mind the idea that ladies were prostitutes, that sex was like in porn videos. Being in an engineering major with little girls, however, I didn’t got to hang out much with the ladies, and I was still blind to the error of my ways.
That was, until I met this girl from one of my filler classes. For once, and now that I see her in a totally non-sexual way, I knew this girl was and is still the most awesome girl I ever met. Thanks to this, I was willing to settle for a friends-only, non-sexual relationship. But the fake nice guy within me was still not willing to let me go, and I thought: if I can get a relationship with her, that would be damn nice (read: I’ll fuck her), but if I can’t, that’s fine. Initially, I thought that was simply not expecting too much. Then I found out she was a true lesbian, read: forget about ever fucking her. When I found this out, I thought: alright, that’s fine, she’s a cool girl, she truly can be a great friend. But I still wanted to fuck her, and now that I found out she doesn’t likes men, I was left with a nasty case of blue balls.
After suffering and bemoaning for a week why I couldn’t fuck her, I said: OK, that’s enough, I’m putting a final stop to this bullshit. I’m banging a whore.
That day, I went to the drugstore and bought a pack of condoms, I withdrew $60 from the bank, and I went to the red light district while still under broad daylight to see how things were. It was the seediest, nastiest part of the town, and I was already kinda feeling scared, but I was willing to risk my stuff and my life just to finally get laid. I posted my intentions on Gaia just to see if someone could stop me, because I had sworn with my best friend not to ever fuck a whore in our lives, but my heart was cold and my dick was hot, so I was still preparing myself to risk my shit just for a little bit of quick sex.
That was, until an user from Gaia finally made me see the truth.
Basically, playing the nice guy ploy was not the way to go. I had to be myself, but as in, truly being myself. I thought I was indeed being myself, but my self-image was a nice-guy-who-wants-to-get-laid version of myself (such was the extent of the problem!). And the only way to do this was by shedding myself from any perverted thought about sex. My goal when hanging out with the girls was rewritten. Instead of being nice to them to have sex, my goal is to be nice to them just because it pleases me. I used to look at porn while jerking myself off to sleep all the time, because that was how I thought girls were: porn whores. But now I know they’re not. After meeting that girl, I finally got to know how it’s like to hang out with a girl I truly like for her personality, not just for her looks, and I finally got to know how it’s like to be truly honest with a girl instead of just acting nice with the goal of getting laid.
To any girl who meets a fake nice guy, I want you to put an end to their suffering and make them see the light. These people are like this because they truly believe in that shit. They deceive themselves, like I did. As you said, a central part of these people is a false hope: if you ask them if “nice” guys end up winning, they will answer yes no matter what they say. This kind of people will never get laid, ever, and I’m not afraid to recognize it myself: I was never going to get laid. (Currently? Well, maybe, not expecting it, but if it happens, good for me). Tell them to shed themselves from perverted thoughts. They might think it’s normal to jerk off to porn every night and going out to strip clubs every weekend, but it’s not. And if you know a girl who’s not terribly sexy but is indeed a very great girl to hang out with, whether it’s because she’s cheerful, literate, can tolerate guy humor or whatever the reason is, and you know a fake “nice” guy who’s in the process of finally becoming himself, introduce her to him, so that he can finally get to know what it’s like to have a pure, non-sexual relationship with a girl.
PS: A final lesson on dogged nice guys. Whatever you do, do *not* use them for your bidding. It’s tempting, I know, but this will only make them resentful. And there is one thing that’s worse than a creepy, fake “nice guy”, and that’s a “former nice guy” who became resentful after a lifetime of manipulation, and that, as a result, became an openly misogynistic asshole who turned his sexual life to prostitutes and strippers because he thinks women are only good for a quick fuck.
Second everyone here. You rock my socks. Are you single?
And I too want to know what self-respecting man puts up with going shopping with female friends, or putting up with baby-sitting reckless behavior at parties. You put up with that shit passive-aggressively and expect to get laid?
You know what also galls me, something that bears more repeating than what I’ve seen in the slew of responses so far? That these Nice Guys excoriate women for being shallow when it comes to looks but then they won’t deign to be interested in girls who aren’t built like Playboy bunnies. WTF? It’s like Jason Alexander’s character in Shallow Hal, who himself was far from hot yet he had exacting standards of beauty for all his potential women. Well, Jack Black’s character too, obviously. The number of guys who themselves were no Adonis complaining about there not being any hot chicks around that I’ve heard is astonishing. Yeah, thanks for making me feel good about myself as a woman, assholes.
‘They are after me all the time to show me how I cleft a gerund, it makes them fucking swoon, it does.’
I’m a female English student… want to get coffee?
[...] who sit around and moan that somebody else is getting the snatch to which they are entitled are, de facto, not very [...]
Jim Smith wrote: ‘On a related note, has anyone EVER heard a woman in real life actually say any variant of “Where have all the nice guys gone?”’
Yes, several times. The translation: “I’ve got some ideal man who I’m looking for, and no interest in getting to know someone for who they are. Surprisingly, I’ve not managed to meet anyone who exactly fulfils this ideal”. When a woman starts asking where all the nice guys have gone, that’s a clue that I may want to avoid them.
Roy Ward –
I’ll start asking where all the nice guys have gone immediately, if it means men like you will avoid me.
Thanks!
(Translation of your comment, gratis: “Women are bitches. Why won’t any of them date me?”)
I want to have your babies.
No, seriously. Spot on, well written, hilarious
and PRICELESS rant. Thank you for this.
“They are after me all the time to show me how I cleft a gerund, it makes them fucking swoon, it does”
I think I broke a rib XD
I have so much love for this post. A friend just shared it with me, and I feel pure joy. Thank you, MGK, for pointing out just how truly creepy creeps are.
Oh… oh my god, a man that understands! Women all over the internet are applauding. Everything you said is completely true. ( Especially the bit about grammar- proper punctuation? HOT. )
Brilliant rebuttal!
MGK, the ironic thing is that by showing up the “Nice Guys” for the passive-agressive, emotionally immature creeps that they are, you now have more totty at your disposal than those losers could ever dream of! Every socially competant woman who’s ever been made uncomfortable by a Nice Guy’s blatantly insincere attentions will want to jump your bones after reading this. I know I do, you had me at clefting gerunds… *rawr*
[...] girl instead of just expecting her to notice what a wonderous human being he is like the classic Nice Guy, who believes that his friendship and companionship is like a merit system in which he [...]
Love it! Humorous and very true. Rejection is not the end of the world but getting your World of Warcraft account hacked and raided is (j/k). Sadly, I’m the Nice Girl that’s not noticed. When I am, it’s by the wrong guy. I don’t have ridiculous standards. Ask and you shall receive! What’s so hard about being honest? It’s worked for me so far. I intend for it to get me my Nice Guy. I could rant about how awesome I am because I’m a tomboy and nerd/geek that’s *gasp* actually pretty but, this is about the article and not my love life.
I read this post a few days ago, and it’s been sticking in my mind–probably because there’s a bigger streak of “Nice Guy” in me than I’d like to admit. What I’m wondering, though, is how much the “Nice Guy” thing is reinforced in popular literature. How many romantic comedies feature a the nice guy (or nice girl) playing the role and eventually getting that significant other? Hell, if you remove every episode from “Friends” where either Rachel or Ross are playing “the nice ________” role, what you’re basically left with is a few scenes with Chandler and Joey watching Baywatch. I was re-watching Dr Horrible, and Billy pretty much IS the nice guy, too busy making passive-aggressive comments about Mr “Cheesy on the outside” to tell Penny how he feels.
Pushing it further back to its extreme, I think we can even see traces of this thread in early European lit. The Petrarchan sonnet cycle, the staple for unrequited love, is more about yearning for the girl and feeling sorry for yourself than actually getting her. The chivalric code is practically “Nice Guy” codified into law.
All of these examples carry their own counterargument to an extent–the tragedy of Dr Horrible, for example, is that if he had the courage to tell Penny, the story would (probably) have had a much happier ending. And no amount of storybooks excuse acting like an asshole. I guess I don’t really have a point, besides the idea that if I type these ideas out here, maybe they’ll stop roaming around my own head.
You know, I’m re-reading this for the n-th time and it doesn’t get any less true the more I read it. I love this essay. Since I like a) listening to people and b) girls, I’ve heard the rant and had this discussion with a few of my guy friends, though somewhat less eloquently. I may just send them over here in the future.
Man, I loved reading this. Thank you!
Huh, it cut off the rest of my comment, for some reason? I’ll give up if it does it again, sorry for spammage. D:
I’ve had a few Nice Guys assume I’m the female equivalent, as well. I’d sit and listen to them gripe about their terrible roommates, or their crazy exes, and I’d try to make them feel better because I hate seeing people upset. (And I’m not talking about them saying, “I had a shitty day, can I talk to you?” I’m talking about nearly every interaction with these guys turning into me being a shoulder to cry on.) And so far, without fail, they’ve turned around and professed interest in me.
I… don’t think I can properly explain how much that makes me want to run away instantly. Just because I’m willing to sit and listen to you gripe, at least until I’ve decided that that’s all you’re going to do (rather than take steps to, say, fix it?), does not mean I’m sticking around because I expect something more. I’m trying to make you feel better because it seems like the decent human thing to do, you know? You can’t honestly think that it’s something the ladies go crazy for, so I don’t know what the deal is there.
And of course, these guys are the ones who seem to take it personally when I tell them I’m gay. Sorry, guys! I didn’t realize you were only using me as your sounding wall because you wanted in my pants! Apparently, trying to make a guy feel better when he’s down in the dumps is practically leading them on. Whoda thunk?
What really sucks is that you can’t always tell the nice guys from the Nice Guys; I mean, you can be a nice guy who has a crush on his female friend. Being a C cup with nice legs who belonged to the Math Club, the Chess Club, the Robotics Team, and the Marching Band, I had a bunch of guy friends with things for me. They didn’t hang out with me and do stuff with/for me because of that, though; it was because they actually enjoyed spending time with me and were decent human beings. As one of them said to me, years after high school, after he and the others had all gotten over me, “I spent time with you because you were fun to be around and did things for you because you were my friend. If you decided that you were madly, passionately in love with me and wanted nothing better than to run away with me, that would’ve been nice, but I didn’t think it was likely.”
In college, I also had a guy friend who liked me, and he watched me in my room–to protect me, he said–left at least thirty messages on my phone a day, made a list of reasons why I should dump my boyfriend–who’s now, four years later, my fiance–and get with him instead, and other sweet, affectionate, nice gestures. I ended up getting a restraining order.
Look. Sometimes it’s just not meant to be. I don’t care if you’re in love with me–I think that’s sweet, actually–but that doesn’t mean that I love you back, or that I want to be with you. As much as I adore When Harry Met Sally, men and women CAN be friends. Really.
Did anyone else have a flashback to this after the Pittsburgh gym shooting?
For anyone coming about and reading this now, I just want to mention that the girlfriend I mentioned above is now my fiancée. Go nice guy!
Hmm, reading this, I think i might have been a “Nice Guy” in the way that I treated others; nice so that they would be nice to me, not because I cared about them (barring my closest friends). I kinda acted this to a guy as well, but that was a fucked up night with way too much drama, so I claim extenuating circumstances.
Strangly, does anyone else notice that (even if it’s just making out), they get into more sexual situations when they *aren’t* looking for sex but just go out for fun?
[...] by Robin G I’ve held this as a general theory for a while, so listen up, nice guys (or Nice Guys), but maybe not for the reason you’d think. I actually don’t think girls like a [...]
[...] to Point #1. I’ve held this as a general theory for a while, so listen up, nice guys (or Nice Guys), but maybe not for the reason you’d think. I actually don’t think girls like a [...]
[...] to Point #1. I’ve held this as a general theory for a while, so listen up, nice guys (or Nice Guys), but maybe not for the reason you’d think. I actually don’t think girls like a [...]
I hope you don’t mind, but I linked to & quoted your post in response to a bar-hopping Nice Guy’s commentary becoming popular on Digg:
http://digg.com/people/Why_I_didn_t_buy_you_a_drink_PIC
I think that one hits a new low — she owes him drinks/sex for spending ANY time with her rather than his friends!
This is in response to Whitecat who said in response to Roy Ward:
‘I’ll start asking where all the nice guys have gone immediately, if it means men like you will avoid me.’(Translation of your comment, gratis: “Women are bitches. Why won’t any of them date me?”)
Dear Whitecat – you ARE a bitch.WHY WOULD anyone date you in the first place?
It’s also amusing that the sycophants posting here say that the author is going to ‘get laid’ more frequently – WOW! Doesn’t THAT make him a bit of a sex-hungry creep? Idiots.
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