Hey, remember the “Internet Nice Guy” post from 2007? Well, it still gets traffic and the occasional comment, and I felt I should share this one, from “doesntmatter” (although I added some paragraph breaks to his wall of text):
So funny how everbody jumps on the bandwagon an the females aplaud the author for being totally one sided and saying exactly what they want to hear, while he totally disregards the other side of the story, that some females indeed are bitches who just use males when they are in the need, e.g. if their asshole boyfriend dumped her again (because he just wanted sex and nothing more, and that was clear from the beginning for everyone except for her), perfectly knowing that the guy they are using is loner who wants a girlfriend (and sex, of course) and will do pretty much anything for her, and instead of saying “You? Never!” or just talking to another person they just throw him away after use and forget it.
I mean, how can they NOT know that he of COURSE wants to fuck with her? That does not per se mean that he ONLY wants to fuck with her, but maybe talking and being nice to each other is not the only thing he is dreaming of… Then there are females that just tease males to ridicule them later. That makes one bitter indeed, doesn’t it? And then, if that bitter person complains, it is all HIS fault for being an asshole in the first place? Give me a brake, that is some flawed logic there, he only became a bitter asshole because of what happened, because females used and abused him.
You say that being nice to get sex is creepy, but then you offer the author of this post relationships (and of course sex, a relationship without sex is not a “relationship” of the kind you were talking about when you said things like “marry me” or “i want to bone you for the next 15 years”) because he was nice and said what you want to hear, so what exactly is the difference? That he not indirectly stated that he want’s sex as a reward? Or in other words, that is Nice Guy facade is just more elaborate and well hidden so that you don’t see through it? Maybe he is of the same loser-type as the guy who wrote the rant but has just taken a different aproach by doing the opposite of what the Nice Guy Loner Jerk does, while his ultimate goals remain the same: Getting into a relationship and have sex.
You all feel relieved that you can point to the guys and say “You are the assholes” while you yourself make mistakes, totally disregard his desires and are assholes yourselves, if you follow the kind of logic that is prevailing in this discussion. For example, if you are “stalked” by a guy who wants a relationship with you, you not always give him clear signals that you will never engage in such things with him, and hope that he will realise it sooner or later, while he does not, because he is terribly in love with you (and even if he only wants sex, good lord, you all sound like you have never felt the need for sex when sex wasn’t available. Oh, but i forgot, if a girl wants to fuck she just has to ask pretty much anybody if she is relatively good looking, and even if she is not good looking she can still ask around and on the fifth try or so she will get what she wants while a guy who asks for sex is just a perverted desire-driven asshole. Oh wait, did that sound bitter? Damn, I must be one mean kind of Former Nice Guy, I should better try to learn to communicate, and really be nice, not so cynic, that will help me, ok ok, maybe i should state clearly what i want instead of being passive-aggressive (oh shit, that would be sex first, relationship later, then that is not an option, dammit, my fault for having not the same priorities that are required to get sex, wich would be: Don’t desire Sex at any time, isn’t that really fucked up?)).
TL;DR: There are always two sides to a story, and it DOES matter if you are in a relationship and can talk down to people who are not, or if you are part of the folks which are not in a relationship and try like crazy to get into one only to see all their efforts crumble to dust. A rich man can lightly say that money does not really matter in life, while the poor man will certainly say the opposite. So don’t be so fucking full of yourselves because you were lucky and others were not.
Have fun with it, everybody!
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Rule of thumb: disregard the opinions of anyone who doesn’t know what paragraphs are for. Also anyone who is quite that cruel to the comma.
Sentence fragments are fine. Sexy people use sentence fragments.
Christ, what an asshole!
That guy needs a blog. No wait. He needs *your* blog. Which he isn’t going to get.
This is pretty fantastic, really. A “Nice Guy” goes on a rage following repeated failures, followed by MGK calling him out and itemizing exactly why his rage is moronic and pointless, followed by another (or the same?) “Nice Guy” coming back to defend the original silliness by saying that MGK and all his beautiful, man-manipulating uppity fangirls are horribly wrong for being INCONSIDERATE.
The fun part is knowing exactly where the Nice Guys come from, having done exactly that dance before. I faced rejection after rejection after rejection, and at last I finally decided that I would be nice to myself instead of kneeling before the next Beleaguered Love Goddess (a.k.a. ANY WOMAN) to walk in front of my vision.
Two weeks later, met the girl I was going to marry. Some time later, married her. Still with her, happy as a clam.
Is my formula perfect? No. But you will find that you’re far happier in life when you take care of yourself and are good to yourself. And happy people live happy lives.
Some of them even do it ALONE. *gasp*
You know, I feel for this particular Nice Guy. Nice Guys take a real beating on the Internet. Some of it is richly deserved, but much is just piling-on.
Here’s my qualifications, since they’re always demanded at some point in a Nice Guy discussion: I’ve been in a monogamous heterosexual relationship for the last nine-plus years. Five of those, I’ve been married. In my life, I have been the Nice Guy, I have been just a nice guy (both single and not), and I’ve been an asshole. A few times, those have overlapped.
Here’s my point: almost all humans are capable of growth, but they have to start from somewhere. Mocking, shaming, stuff like that? Doesn’t encourage growth in my experience. I didn’t grow when I was mocked, and I sure as hell didn’t encourage growth in the people I’ve mocked, either.
Yes, there are creepy Nice Guys out there. There are also (for those in the old post who expressed doubt) women who have leaned heavily on one-sided friendships with guys they know are attracted to them to bolster their own shaky self-esteem. A lot of both groups are young, and haven’t learned yet. Some of both groups are old enough to know better.
Overt mocking and shaming tend to work best when they upend a widely-sensed power relationship. The social maladjust who’s trying desperately (and unsuccessfully) to endear himself to a pretty girl? He’s got no power. Want to help him become a nice guy instead of a Nice Guy? Show him how it’s done. Identity with the frustrations you can, and be kind when you point out how his bitterness is self-defeating. Want to entrench him in bitterness? Point and laugh. (Want him to go away? Just ignore him. It’s totally possible. I promise.)
I’ve read MGK for a long time now. I don’t always agree with him, but I usually find him smart, funny, and generally humane. I’m sad that my first comment here is to be on a post where he fell down on all three.
The term “nice guy” throws people off. Especially the “nice guys” being discussed in these topics. What we’re really talking about is guys who feel that sex/”relationships” should be given away as a reward. Sex and relationships are not a game, a contest, or a commercial transaction, and if you treat them like they are, you are an asshole and don’t deserve either. The end. It has nothing to do with niceness per se.
You see an asshole. I see a guy who’s probably doing the best he can with what he’s got, and who seems to be in a lot of pain. (Maybe self-inflicted, maybe not. I personally can’tt ell.) Neither of us can be sure what’s going on in his head, though. We can just read what he says and bring our own experience to bear on it.
People who take relationships (or sex) too lightly are unlikely to find happiness with them. People who take them too seriously face the same fate. Finding the right balance can be devilishly hard. Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.
@AJT
The expectations of “nice guys” or “single self-defeating dudes” or whatever are always based on an enormous sense of entitlement, the assumption that they are being denied sex they have rightfully earned through, I don’t know, manipulative pandering or whatever.
Then the modern fellow goes on the internet and complains about how those bitches won’t give him sex and they just want to date “assholes” as designated by him. You don’t see so many women complaining that they’re so nice to guys and then they just run off and date shallow sluts in the same way. “Nice girls finish last” is not a cliche even though there are slightly more women in the world than men.
That is because this whole “nice guy” thing is based entirely on a male sense of entitlement that originates from male power in society, from images that tell men they will all get to date supermodels, movies like “Knocked Up” where an ugly loser gets an amazing woman.
So these guys may not be entirely to blame for responding to what society has told them, but these individuals refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions–clearly it is the woman’s fault for not being mind readers. The “nice guys” don’t even notice the less-attractive girls they passed over in choosing their fixation.
They do this, and then expect a chorus of support for their behavior. “Identifying with their frustrations” is not useful, because their frustrations originate from unrealistic expectations and honestly from just flat-out being spoiled.
“Girls who lean on a guy to prop-up their self-esteem” is not even remotely an equal phenomenon.
Dear Nice Guys,
I understand where you’re coming from. I really do. I used to be a Nice Guy myself. I still am, from time to time. I know how easy it can be to slip into that form, when you feel stressed and tired and humiliated. I know how feeling horny can make already turbulent emotions overwhelm you, how this strange expectation society places on gender can make you feel like a failure. I know what it’s like to be in a place where all advice feels condescending and you want to lash out.
But here’s the thing. If you feel like a failure to perform is completely strangling your self-esteem… the problem is that you feel like something is strangely your self-esteem. If it wasn’t sex, you’d probably think everyone was laughing at you for your poor sandwich making skills and without mystical sandwich making secrets from you. I lucked out because I had friends who twisted my arm to get me into therapy.
Also, you’re complaining that the system is stacked against you and you can’t succeed no matter how hard you try. Do you know else does this? People who play WoW. Think about that.
Sincerely,
Nicholas
@Lindsey
We can certainly agree that TL;DR’s frustrations probably come from unrealistic expectations. Most people’s do. By definition, none of us see the many people we pass over.
I never said Proppers (for lack of a better word) are equal to Nice Guys. What I said is that they’re the other side of the story. There are Nice Guys who make nice girls feel uncomfortable. There are nice guys dumb enough to hang out with Proppers. And there are NIce Guys trying to take advantage of Proppers, and getting taken advantage of in turn. Without seeing them up close, it can be hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Speaking as someone who’s been a Nice Guy before, I can tell you that the frustration doesn’t feel like entitlement from the inside. It felt like the opposite, like everyone else deserved relationships, sex, and happiness, and I didn’t. Trying (in my then-limited way) to deserve those things just didn’t seem to work. Yet I could see clearly “undeserving” people getting what I so desperately wanted and feared I would never find. And that meant, among other things, that I desperately looked for ways for it not to be my fault. You can call that white male privilege or a male sense of entitlement or a designer Invisible Knapsack. All I can say is that at the time my life didn’t feel like a Gender Studies lecture, it felt like a great big ball of suck. Gender Studies lectures didn’t help, watching healthy human behavior did.
In my experience, there are women who are Nice Guys. It manifests a little differently, but it’s there. It doesn’t show up as “Nice girls finish last,” it shows up as “All the good men are married or gay.” And those women deserve every bit as much empathy as Nice Guys.
(And you and I watch Knocked Up from very different places. Seth Rogen doesn’t “deserve” Katherine Heigl; the drama in that story is that he lucks into a one-night stand that gets far more serious than either person can handle. The happy ending there isn’t Rogen becoming worthy of Heigl, it’s both of them becoming worthy of being parents.)
I agree with AJT that for all the faults of the Nice Guys, and there are plenty, a lot of what is said about them is very smug dogpiling. Most such guys are young, and don’t really know a lot about women. They think what they’ve seen on TV and the movies is correct, which is that if they treat a woman well, they will be rewarded with her love. It’s not malevolent; in a way, it’s kind of sweet. The problem, of course, is that women aren’t prizes to be won, but individuals with varying desires and tastes. Consequently, this doesn’t always work out.
Being rejected when giving another person your all can be a pretty devastating experience, and without the proper context to put it in, it can lead to bitterness and feelings of grand injustice. How easy is it to cope with the fact that no one has ever given you good advice, and that you have no idea good advice is actually out there? Not very. How much worse must it be, then, to fail while doing your best and then to be told that not only is it your fault, but that you are in fact a villain?
I should point out that I’m not defending guys who say (or imply) things like, “I got rejected a few times, therefore all women are whores.” However, I do think there is a great deal of excessive force used against a lot of guys who mean well, but simply don’t understand how to talk to women, especially by people who have conquered this barrier themselves. Calling a guy creepy or an asshole because he naively puts women on a pedestal adds nothing to the conversation as far as I’m concerned.
You don’t see so many women complaining that they’re so nice to guys and then they just run off and date shallow sluts in the same way…
Not to give an ounce of support for the very troubled person who wrote the passage MGK quoted, but not in my experience.
“Girls who lean on a guy to prop-up their self-esteem” is not even remotely an equal phenomenon.
I think that most people who argue that it is significant (if not necessarily equal) haven’t explored the implications of “women who have sex with a man to prop up their self-esteem.” They’re still thinking of the presence of sex as the most important part.
This should be a teachable moment.
@Carlos
In my experience, the biggest difference between the woman who leans on a guy to prop up her self-esteem and the woman who has sex with him to do so is that the Nice Guy may have firsthand experience with the former, but not the latter.
This right here. Whenever I need to distill this issue down to a single sentence or two, this is where I begin.
When I need to expand on it, I like to talk about it in terms of guys who think there’s a ‘cheat code’ for women. There are dudes who want to get laid. Fair enough. That requires the willing participation of a second party! Hmm. Tricky! Well, what do women say they want? Okay, they say they want “nice guys”, where that category translates to X, Y, and Z. So if I adopt behaviors X, Y, and Z, then they have to sleep with me, right? I mean, that’s the deal, isn’t it?
But they WONT. In fact, they often seem to sleep with guys who exhibit behavior Z! THEY LIED TO ME. Bitchez be crazy.
Yeah.
Also, for the definitive set of takedowns and analysis on this topic, one cannot ignore Amanda Marcotte. Hit up her blog and search for “Nice Guys.” This Reddit post is also instructive.
I always thought that women do not want to mate “nice guys”. That’s evolutionary brain wiring for you. It’s the same reason why every male’s lizard brain actually wants to impregnate every women as much as it can.
Though we sure broke our mating habits when we remove reproduction out of sex. It’ll sort itself out eventually.
The way I see it, I’m looking to be with someone who has similar views about sexual relationships as I do. Namely that it’s perfectly natural to want sex. I think the problem here is that these “Nice Guys” go for women based purely on looks and have no idea WHO they are as people. Then they pour their hearts out, hoping to be rewarded (either with reciprocated feelings or sex or what have you) and it doesn’t always work. Believe it or not (sarcasm!) women DO have individual tastes and preferences. Some are really into big romantic gestures and some-just-are-not. I.e., maybe if you actually can connect with someone, you’ll have an easier time of getting that relationship/sex/whathaveyou. Honestly, it’s not quantum physics… (Sidebar, I’m using quantum physics instead of rocket science. I’m making it a thing.)
You still the man, MGK. I am one of the people still giving that post traffic: I linked to it just last week to stop a Facebook thread from getting out of control. There was generalised bowing to your opinion.
I’m not bitter (nice girlfriend, etc.) but the complaining from BOTH sides of the Battle of the Sexes does amuse me. That said, I found this years ago:
Q: How many “Let’s Just be Friends” does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, who will…
… call you up every night for three months and talk to you for hours on end, about how bad her current light bulb is, how it goes out without warning, and never provides her with the kind of light she would really love to have.
… tell you what a wonderful light bulb you have, and how any woman would die to have such a light bulb.
… tell you it’s amazing that your light bulb has been sitting alone in it’s little corrugated cardboard tube for the last six months and even more amazing that you don’t have a dozen sockets to screw it into.
… call you up at three o’clock on a Monday morning, (destroying any chance you had of being alert, much less coherent at that crucial business meeting at 8 am) to agonize about the fight she had with her light bulb, and to tell you that she finally lost her temper with it and unscrewed the light bulb forever.
… be shocked at your offer of a replacement bulb, and will tell you that she could never screw your light bulb into her empty socket, that doing so would ruin the light it gives out, and that it’s too good a bulb for her anyway, but that she hopes she’ll still be able to come over and talk to you about her light bulb problems.
… go home, rummage through the trash can, find the defunct light bulb, lovingly clean it off, screw it back into the socket, and sit there in the dark.
… call you up every night for three months…
(I’m so glad to have grown out of being that lightbulb.)
bmaryott: The writer of that gag had better lay in a good supply of Astroglide and Kleenex, as that is really all he deserves until he gets the fuck over himself.
@bmaryott:
Sounds like the hypothetical woman thought the gag writer was an actual friend. How sad for her she was wrong.
@Brandi
I’m going to infer from your reaction that you’ve never engaged in the behavior described in the joke. Kudos, seriously.
Now I’m going to ask you to believe that there are some women who do engage in those behaviors. You’ve got two men in happy relationships in this thread who can say it’s happened.
It doesn’t make all women bad. It makes a niche joke funny to a guy with a certain life experience.
When a tl;dr is, itself, a dense slab of text, perhaps it’s time to walk away from the keyboard, calm down, and come back with a clear head before hitting “post.”
Dear “AJT”,
Your rapid abstraction of women with complex motivations into “Proppers” strongly suggests that you’re not very far removed from your Nice Guy roots at all. Given the volume of your posting on this issue, it also suggests that this topic is still something of a hot button for you.
My working hypothesis: you’re a person with a guilty conscience looking to justify his past behavior and current feelings.
I’m going to bow out of this discussion and watch the pathology in action. Feel free to disconfirm this hypothesis by your further comments — but not to me, please, I’m done.
Ah, feel the love.
People, there are many kinds of folks in the world.
Some take advantage of others.
Some let them.
Some think the way to someone is to be taken advantage of.
Some become bitter because passive-aggressive tactics don’t work.
The trick is to get off the track and grow up.
caffinatedlemur, the writer probably thought he was being a friend and wanted benefits. It doesn’t usually work that way.
@AJT
Actually, saying that the behavior described in the joke is something that makes women ‘bad’ is kind of the essence of nice-guyism. You could be able to recognize enough of someone else’s good qualities to be able to write a book about it without being attracted to them in any way.
If you’re friends with someone, and you don’t want to hear them talk about their boyfriend all the time, you tell them! If you’re friends with someone and you’re fine with hearing about their boyfriend but not at 3am, you tell them! If your friend seems sad about the fact that they haven’t found anyone special in their lives, you try to prop them up and let them know that they’re a good person who deserves someone, like how you have someone in your life.
If you like your friend more than a friend, and you aren’t interested in listening about their boyfriend and would really like to be their boyfriend instead, you tell them! And if they don’t like you back, and would rather keep being friends, then you have to decide whether or not you can live with that. They have given you their terms-there is nothing more that they need or are obliged to do. You are the only one responsible for your own happiness.
Also, unless these guys are attracted to these girls solely because they’ve got many excellent girlfriend qualities and seem like just really good people, then I don’t know why they’d expect these girls to fall over them only because them have these things.
I’ve never understood why some internet denizen’s use of the term “Females” and avoid ever actually saying women or woman. I mean, I’ve never actually heard anyone say “That female’s name is Sarah” you know? It just sounds painfully awkward.
Just to touch on what several others have mentioned already, from my own experience when you go looking for a relationship with the idea that “if I do x I will get y in return”, you’re not going to get too far. When I stopped looking at women as objects to be attained and started seeing them as people, things got much better.
Admittedly, I fell head over heels for one girl back in the day and pursued her with all my heart. Letters, calls, etc. Today we call this “stalking”. Fortunately she found it flattering and eventually we got married. That was 26 years ago and she is still the most interesting person I know.
Coincidentally, after I got married I became an incredibly successful flirt. Looking back, once the “gotta get laid” pressure was off and the ring and devotion were clearly visible, it was more a game and lots more fun for all parties. And again, it came down to seeing others as people instead of objects to be used in the quest of goals achieved.
YMMV, of course.
Anyone trying to defend the “Nice Guy” mentality has a lot of work ahead of them in general, but especially in this case. Because seriously, read what doesntmatter actually wrote. The paragraph breaks in the original post here? Note again that they were added by MGK, except for the one at “TL;DR”. That’s a 700-word wall of text (literally; 775 total, 677 before the “TL;DR” part). It’s badly written, badly proofread, and shows a stunning lack of self-awareness. It’s nearly train of thought in some places. Even if you want to take an unreconstructed evo-psych view of human interaction, it’s still pretty blatantly sexist, and would be frightening to know the author.
Obviously, we can’t literally diagnose someone with a mental disorder by one writing sample. But still, the guy is very probably disturbed somehow. Same to a lesser extent as the guy MGK was talking about all those years ago, the “Former Nice Guy” – sure, he had paragraph breaks, but it still takes quite a bit of nuttiness to write what he wrote. So why are people who agree with them apparently closing ranks, instead of trying to say “OK, sure, that guy’s nuts, but there really is something to the ‘nice guys finish last’ thing, but for totally different reasons!”?
Gene Ray is an atheist (the Time Cube guy; at least, I think he’s an atheist, but who knows), but even atheists tend to laugh at him when appropriate, or shake their heads in sadness at the state of our mental health system. Proud Nice Guys should probably do the same thing here.
Jet, my students use male and female instead of man and woman all the time. It’s not just an internet thing, although it does drive me up the wall.
Actual tl;dr summary: “There are two sides to the issue here, and my side is that women are inherently deceitful monsters who deny me sex for their own amusement.”
The Nice Guy argument always seems to boil down to this attitude that sex is a vital natural resource, and women are some kind of sexy OPEC, carefully adjusting the supply to manipulate the price. Then they get mad when women fail to recognize this totally made-up system.
When I was in college, someone wrote an editorial in the school paper, wondering where all the single girls were at, because I guess he figured every college has a big warehouse full of women, and you swing by to pick one up after you get your parking permit. A week later, a woman wrote a response editorial, basically reversing the issue. “Hey, we’re right here, but where are all the guys?” The moral here is that men and women have the same basic dating frustrations, and they can’t be solved by public complaining.
“…and women are some kind of sexy OPEC, carefully adjusting the supply to manipulate the price.”
Good comment, Mike Smith. It has been endlessly amusing to me how weak the Nice Guy theory is when it comes to women’s intelligence.
Women are smart enough to run the sexy OPEC cartel like Machiavellis; smart enough to be “expected” to recognize the “tacit” goals of attentive “friends”; yet still stupid enough to be fooled by the trinkets and beads masquerading as warmth and companionship.
=======
Another tl;dr “I’m upset that women who are smart enough to divine my intentions have begun to discount the value of my feigned attentiveness.”
This reads like the rapid scribblings of Dave Sim before he bothered to go to the trouble of editing and smoothing out his own thoughts.
And yes, sometimes I bother to add commentary to months/years-old posts, if I feel that they deserve it.
One thing that tends to only be glancingly referred to in these discussions rather than directly talked about is this inherent Nice Guy idea that all women are both sexually desired by all (or at least many) men and aware of said desire.
There are several multimillion dollar industries in this country that depend on making sure all women believe themselves to be deeply unattractive. It’s really not coincidental that there are apparently so many women who seem to be unaware that guys who are being friendly and nice to them may have a sexual interest in them.
When you get guys like this douchebag above making rants about how horrible these women are for not psychically knowing about their interest and doing something about it, that’s you get women like me describing Nice Guys as entitled. It kind of requires the assumption that all women (or at least the woman in question) have perfect self-esteem, despite the fact that the author clearly does not, which means that he has no empathy for them. That is why people get so vitriolic about Nice Guys.
I’ve been in the position of wondering how anyone could find me attractive, but at least I can say I never saw any particular woman as “owing” me sex. I was always able to separate being friendly with being attracted to someone. I could be friendly with someone I was attracted to, but I didn’t interpret their friendliness as a sign of mutual attraction.
That’s where the “She talked about how any woman would love a guy like me!” defense falls apart to me. She may have been telling you the truth, but that’s not an invitation from her. It’s a friend saying she thinks you deserve a healthy relationship, and if she wanted to act on it with you, she would probably have done it instead of hinting at it multiple times.
Honest to god, if there is one thing you can take from the original post (never read it before, so this worked out for me) it’s that YOU NEED TO GROW BALLS and ask women out! Some of them will reject you, and it kind of sucks. But there are lots and lots of women. If the one you like doesn’t reciprocate, find another one. This one blows you off? There’s more where she came from. You’ll at least practice and learn if nothing else.
While you’re dating, try to work on your own life. Get a job if you don’t have one, get in shape if you need to, not just because it impresses women, but because you fucking want to do better for yourself. Don’t change who you are but work on yourself.
Just so we’re clear: I don’t believe that women with complex motivations for lousy behavior can be reduced to “Proppers.” I also don’t believe that men with complex motivations for lousy behavior can be reduced to “Nice Guys.” I do believe that there are women who–for whatever reason–exhibit the behaviors described, just as there are men who–for whatever reason–exhibit “Nice Guy” behavior. Mocking or shaming any of them is not useful.
As for my own motivation? I read MGK’s post in 2007 in real time and thought “hey, some good points here.” I read this rehash (and I went and read the original wall-of-text comment) and I thought “This is cheap and kind of mean.” To me, that made it beneath the usually high quality of posts here. And so I said that. I read that text, and I saw a really raw post by a person in a lot of pain. Choosing to post that pain on MGK’s site was not the most self-aware thing he could have done, but I think reposting it and saying “Have fun with it, everybody!” is the equivalent of bearbaiting with someone who is really hurting.
I am expressly not defending this guy’s attitude, his word choice, or his choice to post his screed on this site. What I am saying is that–contrary to the usual standards of MGK’s posts–pointing and inviting others to mock was neither funny, thought-provoking, or insightful.
There are men out there who lack empathy for the women they encounter. A few of them may be sociopaths. But, in my experience, most of them are just in a shitty place, and they’re already beating themselves up far more than you could. (And, so we’re clear, there are women in the same place.) Why would you choose to pile on to any of them?
I’m not saying Nice Guys are better than Nice Girls, or vice versa. I’m saying most human beings are complicated people with complicated motivations. And I would hope we’re better than the kind of people who kick others when they’re down. If that makes me pathological, so be it.
I honestly feel that it would have been for the best if this poor guy had just let out his bile without comments.
Why would you choose to pile on to any of them?
In the (mostly) vain hope that maybe THIS repitition will get through to this Nice Guy (and others reading), that you are not owed sex by anyone, friendliness and attraction are separate, etc, etc. It’s been known to work too.
What is up with all the self-righteousness in here? Some of you really need to get down from your high horse.
I agree with AJT that mocking people for their shortcomings is in no way endearing, or even appropriate. How easy it is to demonize other people’s behavior when you’re on exactly the same boat as them: This “Nice Guy” can’t empathize with women on the most basic of levels, and you can’t empathize with his struggle in the most basic of levels. How healthy must all of your lives have been, filled with love and acceptance. None of you must have any issues at all. Either that or you’re so very hungry for validation from the rest of your internet MGK-reading peers.
Maybe we should mock people with endogenous depression next, or heroine addicts, maybe. Man, what a bunch of whiners huh?
Just like with everything else, it’s just people and their circumstances. Feel free to condemn them or even judge them. But pointing and laughing is about the worst possible reaction.
And it’s not like the Nice Guy Argument, as I’ll call it, doesn’t have SOME tether in reality. After all, narcissistic personality disorders and psychopaths tend to get laid a lot, and that is statistical fact. “Glibness” is something that exists and, apparently, works, so it’s not like human behavior can’t be mapped. Nice Guys just have the wrong map -and probably the wrong endgame as well- but so do many other people who just are better at it, so what? they don’t get chastised for it?
I agree that whining doesn’t help, and is not endearing at all, and that the internet just helps perpetuate the standard in many ways, but on the other hand it’s arrogant, full-of-themselves comments like a lot of the ones I’m reading here that make me also realize that this is indeed the internet, where people are always very proud about being assholes, because… something. I guess it’s THEIR way of being healthy and having no issues and never having resented anyone in their whole life.
The Nice Guy phenomena is sad and I sincerely hope all of them grow out of it and the ones that don’t at least learn to shut up about it, but this is not how they will. And besides, some of your assumptions are preposterous. Some are assuming that all of these Nice Guys go for girls only based on looks, which I don’t see as a natural conclusion from their outlook, or that they all make their girl “friends” very uncomfortable or something, when I’ve seen it’s not always the case; often too.
Bottom-line is this: There is no map to growing up and becoming a healthy human being. Some of you were lucky and fell on your feet, a lot of others were not and are still struggling with it. Empathize with them, unlike the psychopaths you’re making them out to be.
And since I am sure that someone will chastise me as one of these Nice Guys or something, I will say that I am not; I’m just the older brother of a kid who, at 15 years old, tried to kill himself by hanging because the girl he was fawning over turned out to be a bully like you. Lucky for you all, you’re very much validated by some “Guys are always the problem, not girls. Never girls.” line of thinking that you most probably adopted as an answer to the admittedly male-centered world we live in. How great for you, that you’re so open-minded and progressive and privileged and healthy.
Why would you choose to pile on to any of them?
They should be thankful that people are piling on. Here’s why.
Nice Guys are pursuing a strategy that results in their not getting laid. (If the strategy worked, they wouldn’t be Nice Guys, because part of Niceness is the frustration that you don’t get sex in return for your minimal effort to act like a non-sociopath.) So they go on the internet and rant about the “unfairness” of it all.
We can ignore the replies in support, because those replies come from other Nice Guys, who by definition aren’t getting laid either.
The rest of the replies come from all sorts of people but there are three groups of great interest to the Nice Guy: men and women who are currently in a committed heterosexual relationship, men who got game, and women who are single right now but explain what intrigued them about their previous boyfriends.
In short, people who have gotten laid are explaining exactly how it happened and what they did to make it happen. It’s like you’re whining how it takes a long time to change a tire and the next twelve comments all begin “Well, here’s what I do in my day job as a Formula One pit crew member.”
Some percentage of Nice Guys will decide that if they always hear similar things in the pile-on (stop assuming that women owe you sex, try to make yourself presentable and fun to be around, be assertive and be willing to accept rejection) they will try these things. And lo and behold, they stop being Nice, ahem ahem.
The rest of them, who react to this wellspring of free successful advice by getting defensive and lashing out, they’re still not getting laid. And then they have the gall to wonder why.
yeah, I think this anti-Nice Guy stuff is bull. It is the 21st century after all. “Oh, this guy’s only nice because he wants sex.” Maybe instead it’s this guy is nice because he hopes she’ll like him enough that she’ll ask him out.
Guys, I will tell you the secret to getting laid. Like a girl, and be nice to her because you like her. There is a good chance this will make her like you back. Then sex.
You’re welcome.
After all, narcissistic personality disorders and psychopaths tend to get laid a lot, and that is statistical fact
Care to back this up with a source? Because I’m going to go out on a limb and say I don’t believe this is statistical fact. I certainly can’t find any study on it.
It’s irrelevant anyway because 99% of Nice Guys don’t have a psychological problem, they’re just assholes and that is Statistical Fact.
There’s a saying that begins “wish in one hand” and it doesn’t end “handful of wishes”. If you like a person and don’t ask them out, you are getting exactly what you asked for and have no reason to complain.
Anticorium: No reason to complain? Again, it is the 21st century. Everybody complains.
Isn’t checking your old posts for comments a little narcissistic? To be fair it’s probably what I’d do though if I had a successful blog.
Ugh, Nice guys, ugh. I’m no expert sex-forager but I never got those guys. With all of the women who are my friends, I have little to no sexual attraction to them, that’s not a comment on their attractiveness, it’s just that to my mind they’re all amorphous grey blobs, like my sisters. I can have a real opinion on them because I’m too close.
I guess the difference there are that those are genuine friendships built on mutual interests and that I don’t let them get away with shit my male friends wouldn’t be able to do.
Wolfthomas- I think in the case of the so called ‘nice guys” the attraction comes before the friendship and from there they hope “Maybe someday there will be more” though anti”nice guys” probably figure the thought process is “Maybe if I’m nice enough she’ll pay me with sex.”
“Isn’t checking your old posts for comments a little narcissistic?”
I’m curious, how do you know that this isn’t a result of the software or whatever? There is a “Recent Comments” feature at the bottom, right?
A bit hasty with the accusations, bro.
I get an email log of comments which I check regularly (primarily for racist slurs, spam and other bannables).
Speaking of bannables, ironic use of “bro”? That’s a paddlin’.
It’s irrelevant anyway because 99% of Nice Guys don’t have a psychological problem, they’re just assholes and that is Statistical Fact.
That’s not the point I was trying to make. What was trying to say is that the “Nice Guy Argument” that girls go for assholes is at least backed up by the way people apparently behave around NPD’s and some breeds of Psychopaths, which is being drawn by their “charisma” which is nothing more than their incapacity to perceive others as much more than a treat for their own amusement (which would in turn make them seem distant enough to not come across as needy) translated into aloofness and ease around people (since they don’t “feel” the same way, they often have very little to lose, at least in the emotional sense).
“Nice Guys”, as you mention, are probably just immature, not psychologically disturbed. The point was that narcissists and other disturbed people seem to have an easier time finding girls than “Nice Guys” do -while probably having similar twisted
views on the objective- yet are not condemned on the basis that the way they operate blends in acceptably in an environment that is, many times (at least enough to be relevant, as evidenced by the avalanche of cases that report it and despite your collective claims to the contrary) quickly to reward shallow attraction with sex, followed by bonding, followed by relationships. This is the same system that is quick to reject neediness (which is understandable, but if you don’t see, even in a vacuum, that “Nice Guys” are a very obvious consequence of this reality then I don’t know what to tell you).
So, to recap, my point with referencing people with actual disorders that do well in the dating world despite it was that “Nice Guys” reference something that has at least SOME tether in reality that is measurable, that measure being that people that by all account should do worse than them, do better. They call them “assholes” or “douchebags” and while I’m sure they will not always mean the mentally disturbed cases since their definition will most likely be wide enough that it encompasses everyone whose lifestyle and social status can be envied by them and their limited one, they do have a point in that sometimes the dating world does indeed work in ways that could be considered pathological, and it’s hard to come to terms with that reality.
And the NPD and Psychopathic Charm I’m talking about is called “Glibness” or “Superficial Charm”. Look it up.
And by the way, if there’s no backup for my claim (for which I’m sure there is at least studies on, Hervey Cleckler’s and Robert Hare’s at the very least) then there is certainly absolutely none for yours, that simply decides they should all be “assholes” based on your own self-righteousness.
Here’s the reason I roll my eyes at this kind of Nice Guy: he thinks I and pretty much every other woman is a bitch and a cunt and a slut without even getting to know us first. I don’t owe him anything, and he deserves to be mocked.
sure is Hal Jordan in here.
Wow. what a retard.
Nice Guyism is about pretending being neurotic, creepy and passive aggressive are virtues. The whole asshole thing is about guys who have enough self-confidence not to be creepy, neurotic and passive agressive. Traits women tend to find unattractive for some reason.
There is also something to be said for realising that vaginas are not filled with rainbows and unicorns. There are people attached to them, not narratives and maybe if you’re going to write your own special romantic story there should at least be some effort to include the other person.
That said, I also think the whole ‘Only Girl In The Room’-ism of nerd girl culture kind of contributes to this whole dynamic as well.
Haha what’s the bet this guy has a current restraining order out against him.
And the NPD and Psychopathic Charm I’m talking about is called “Glibness” or “Superficial Charm”. Look it up.
And by the way, if there’s no backup for my claim (for which I’m sure there is at least studies on, Hervey Cleckler’s and Robert Hare’s at the very least) then there is certainly absolutely none for yours, that simply decides they should all be “assholes” based on your own self-righteousness.
You’re right! It was really silly of me to make a wild claim based on absolutely no evidence at all other than my own gut feelings and then pretend it was backed up by an actual study.
Speak for yourself, Danny. I for one am convinced. Nice Guys are merely stating the only logical response to the fact that there is no visible difference between a willingness to be assertive and risk rejection and psychopathic mental illness.
I googled Cleckley & Hare; and both of them have studies and techniques about the detection of sociopathy and how sociopaths can function successfully in general, but there were no studies about the romantic exploits of sociopaths.
As requested, I also looked up “Superficial Charm” and while the vague-sounding “improved romantic opportunities” appears on the laundry list of possible positive outcomes, again no studies on that seem to exist.
After all, narcissistic personality disorders and psychopaths tend to get laid a lot, and that is statistical fact.
Well, I guess it’s time to work on my narcissism and psychosis.
“Why would you choose to pile on to any of them?”
Because bullying is fun with a crowd. Also having a abstraction of a person instead of a real one makes things easier.
My question in all this is why everyone assumes it’s always about sex. There are plenty of guys who are interested in love. That still doesn’t mean the Nice Guy thing works, but the idea of one person trying to win or earn another’s love should at least seem a little less creepy or whatever. Perhaps it doesn’t, because I guess there are enough people so entrenched in hookup culture that sex is the goal rather than the byproduct of a healthy, loving relationship, but to me, that must count for something.
Also, I find it fascinating that many people are morally offended at the notion that someone might say, “Hey, I don’t agree with this person, but perhaps we should treat men who don’t know how to talk to women like they’re troubled human beings instead of Nazi rapist cannibals.” And that the response, rather than to address this argument, is to hack at the minutiae or offer smug, self-evident dismissals.
“Nice Guys are merely stating the only logical response to the fact that there is no visible difference between a willingness to be assertive and risk rejection and psychopathic mental illness.”
Man, if so-called Nice Guys can’t see any difference between having the gumption to risk rejection and just ask someone out rather than passively hinting at it and “psychopathic mental illness,” that says more about Nice Guys then it does anything else.
What a complete monster that poster is! I mean, can anyone even imagine? Being young and confused about the dating game and horny? He sounds like he has a serious mental condition or psychosis. Someone should hunt him down, tranquilize him, and lock him up.
I mean, just the very idea!
/grabs smelling salts
/collapse on fainting couch
>stop assuming that women owe you sex
I think the lot of you are confusing “thinking you are owed sex” and “fucking WANTING SEX like a normal goddamn human being”.
What is up with all the self-righteousness in here?
It rhymes with “A big part of MGK’s audience comes from Scans_Daily.”
Wellllllllll…
Why shouldn’t we take them at their word?
Huh, How did we get from this person is the worst thing ever to he is just a naive young guy who is confused about the world. Its a bit hard, especially for a woman to feel sympathy for TLDR guy.
Its pretty clear the guy lacks any sort of empathy. Maybe its just when he approaches women but I kinda doubt it. The fact that he managed to spew all that crap indicated he is unaware of his surroundings to an embarrassing degree. Due to this lack of awareness of others, he derived a sense of entitlement.
This entitlement is not necessarily explicit(although it does come across pretty loud and clear in this case). This entitlement basically tells the nice guy that if he accomplishes certain tasks that he thinks the girl enjoys, he will be rewarded with a relationship or sex.
This attitude basically leaves the nice guy on a completely different communication channel than the girl in question. When the girl does reject him, the nice guy’s fragile ego turns to anywhere but himself. And the result is the above diatribe. It is a man-child throwing a tantrum. It is petty, Ugly and bitter. Ultimately, the nice guy has to come to realize that his own ego is really not that important in the grand scheme of things. It is far more important to learn how to pay attention to other people. After all, no one likes a selfish prick.
Also, the sociopath argument is really amusing. It takes a special kind of bitterness to imply that the success of others occurs because they lack certain human traits. A bit ironic considering that is usually the nice guys who lacks a sense of empathy.
I don’t want to talk about the nice guy thing at all.
I just want to note that friendships require reciprocity of some kind to function. If you’re in a friendship where the other party gets more value out of you than you get out of them, and it’s depressing you, then it’s okay to get out of that friendship.
It doesn’t make you a bad person.
That is all. Carry on.
The poster seems fairly inarticulate,but there seems to be genuine pain there,even if he won’t necessarily admit it.The pain of a clueless,inadequately socialized young man.And no,I don’t think he’s necessarily looking for sex;at least,not exclusively.He could express himself better,and definitely could do with a little less anger,but he does have a point.
There really is no school where the socially impaired can learn to relate to the opposite sex.Most people pick it up as they go along,and some people are naturally good at it,but there is always a s subset of people who have problems with even the basic fundamentals.And to be brutally honest,a fair amount of the relationship advice out there is geared more to getting you laid by multiple women, which is actually easier than getting into a worthwhile relationship.
In my experience,people who are less…invested in their other people tend to …not do better,but have a deeper pool of potential relationship mates.And that pool does not usually overlap with their stable of close friends.
The socially impaired,on the other hand,tend to…fixate,on people who they are already comfortable with.Sometimes,it’s someone they fancy romantically,but start by making friends first as a low risk entree.At other times,it’s old friends who they start to develop feelings for.
There really are emotionally vulnerable people out there who are taken advantage of.It doesn’t necessarily make the people who do so villains;few people are actually evil.It just happens that most people think of themselves first,often to the disadvantage of others,even their friends.
The flood of imagery from Hollywood,doesn’t help,either.Nor do the hormones of young adulthood,which can make people do frankly stupid shit.
PS You know,I really could have used this kinda insight a few years ago.
My apologies for the whole wall of text.
See, I feel that there’s a lot of empathy to be had for statements like “There are always two sides to a story, and it DOES matter if you are in a relationship and can talk down to people who are not, or if you are part of the folks which are not in a relationship and try like crazy to get into one only to see all their efforts crumble to dust.”
Out of context, that is. In context, though, this is defending an approach where “try like crazy” does not include “ask a woman out” or “try to understand what this woman that you theoretically consider a friend wants out of a relationship.” That’s the creepy part — the assumption that you’re doing your best when what you’re doing is not founded on trying to understand the other 50% of the equation. 50%! That is a lot of cent.
zob:“Also having a abstraction of a person instead of a real one makes things easier.”
Except if you’re the Nice Guy, apparently, who has determined that all women are awful, shallow bitches and yet is still desperately miserable.
Meanwhile, FeepingCreature has it nailed.
This guy needs to see a shrink. Post haste.
I think it’s important to point out that there is a distinct difference between nice guys and Nice Guys. Little “n” nice guys are simply guys who are nice. They are friends who are friends for the sake of being friends. They can be an awesome thing to have in your life.
Nice Guys are guys who, having not had their romantic interest returned, decide to act as your friend in hopes that some day the scales will fall from your eyes and you will see the amazing person that is before you and realize the error of your ways. They are friends with ulterior motives. They are, quite simply, guys who don’t take no for an answer who, after a period of time, get very bitter and angry when the object of their affection’s eye scales remain firmly in place.
They are extremely creepy and should be avoided at all costs.
Feeping Creature- a person with poor social skills may not be so quick to realize they can or should break off a friendship that easily. Earlier in the thread someone made a comment about calling someone at 3 AM to talk about relationship problems. Now for me there’s two reasons to call me at 3 AM. THere’s been a death, or you’re in a different time zone and it’s an accident. Still I wouldn’t look forward to having to tell someone this and wouldn’t know where to go from there.
Eric S. Smith- people generalize in comments, hell this whole thing about “nice guys” is generalization.
The first comment in that old thread mentions reading MySpace.
It’s like seeing into a previous century!
That original Nice Guys post was how I discovered this blog (hat tip to Cleolinda Jones). Nostalgia!
Jason:
There is, of course, another reason why someone might call at 3 AM: namely, if the person they’re calling has encouraged their calling, through such actions as, say, having a conversation at 3 AM instead of saying “I’m sorry, I really need to sleep right now.”
Re Ladypeyton
Clearly they aren’t that creepy, or the objects of their desire wouldn’t keep them on speed-dial. I’m sorry, but this notion “Unrequited love is sick and wrong!” is such a painfully shallow, outsider-looking-in perspective.
On the one hand, I sympathize with girls who think they’ve got a friend only to discover the guy is just interested in the one thing. On the other hand, I’m not sure what gets added to the conversation by screaming “Freak! Freak! Pepper spray him!” Clearly, the guy in question is having a rough time socializing. Using social pressure to emotionally pile-on said guy really just marks you as a Grade A bitch.
Mooning over unrequited love isn’t a strictly male-chasing-female relationship, and I’d be curious to see if your reaction to a girl making heart doodles around the name of her current crush or a woman suddenly deciding to flirt with a platonic friend would get treated with the same level of shock and horror.
Luke: is it encouragement or simply poor social skills. As I said I wouldn’t like to have the conversation about not calling at 3AM. I’d be wondering what I’d done to give the impression this was an okay thing to do, plus wondering how the person on the other side of the line would react to me trying to end the conversation. And I certainly wouldn’t want to end a friendship during a 3 AM phonecall.
@Eric S. Smith
How can you link an observation about bullying (it is easier to bully an abstraction of a person) to an opinion (nice guys are miserable bigots) by using “except”. Transitive or intransitive you shouldn’t be able to do that.
So I am guessing you are trying to insult me by implying that I am a “miserable bigot of a nice guy” and/or you just want to join the bandwagon of bashing.
To your knowledge. I am not a nice person. I do believe that people are evil and stupid. But it is not a gender specific observation. Every single member of human race is evil (though stupidity level changes). We do occasionally act decent because years ago some clever monkey found that it would increase our survival odds.
Zinfab, I love unrequited love just as much as the next person! The Nice Guy isn’t getting slammed for being an introvert, or too optimistic. And you’re right, ladies can experience it, too. I cheer for all these folks!
Buuuuuuuuuut…..
You did read the rants where the women get blamed, right? Let’s talk about that part a little bit. Do you think that fits with your narrative of informed consent about choosing to pursue unrequited love? And how about the transaction language that is constantly employed? This is the person I am willing to pepper spray.
transaction language started being used about relationships the first time someone said you have to work to have a healthy relationship
Obligatory Disclaimer: I am, as of this moment, in a long distance relationship, which is a whole different kind of headache.
I am a guy, and I am the father of two chidren from a former marriage.
That being said; I cannot muster a lot of empathy for a person who makes claims like the reply we are discussing. Though I do feel a non trivial amount of pity.
In my case, I’m still awkward around women. I have zero ideas about how to approach other than to be myself and be honest about how I feel. My method is not spectacularly successful. But it is mine, and i can wrap my head around it.
The sort of frustration the “Nice Guys” feel is familiar though. I have lost count of the number of women who have told me I would be wonderful as a significant other but for the fact that I: A) have kids, and as primary caregiver, and B) make them my first priority.
You get over it, and you move along. But when it seems to repeat as a pattern over and over, you get discouraged. If you give into that discouragement, you can easily become bitter and cynical. If you let that be your only view on things, you become the “Nice Guy”.
A “Nice Guy” isn’t bad, or evil, or anything to be reviled. He’s just pitiful because he’s trapped himself into this unending cycle of obsess-hope-attempt-fail-feel shame-react-hate self-calm down-obsess. and I think that honestly the big thing in that cycle is reacting to the rejection, and then hating one’s own self.
Look, there’s no easy solution to NGS. Nice Guy Syndrome is a horrible mix of hope against (percieved) odds, entitlement, and self targeted hatred. There’s no easy way to overcome that because as humans most of us have a drive to find someone to be with. It doesn’t help that the percieved social norm is one of “if you are alone, you are different/unworthy/broken” and that is a very powerful shame prod.
I have no answers. I don’t feel that “Nice Guys” are owed anything but basic human consideration. But I don’t think just beating them for being caught in that cycle will do much either.
@ Jason Barnett “transaction language started being used about relationships the first time …”
Interesting theory about the origins, but the origin is not really that relevant to how the language employed undercuts Zinfab’s pretty narrative of “unrequited love.”
highlyverbal- my point was that the language has been used so long it’s the easy, common, regular way to discuss such things most of the time
I’m a recovering Nice Guy, and all the mocking articles helped me see how creepy I was. They helped heaps.
As someone who leaves snarky comments late, I’m hoping someone will respond to my “The Big Bang Theory is a nerd minstrel show” comment.
@HonestObserver
I’ll bite.
With a better haircut, a new outfit and a smile, no police officer would ever empty his gun into any of TBBT’s cast members “because someone mentioned over the police scanner that a store was robbed by geeks.”
OTOH, any random group of black Americans who you’ll ever meet (including those of us who show up at comic book stores on Wednesdays to pick up our pull list items, watch B5/Galactica/BTVS/insert name of nerd-crack TV show here, collect busts of our favorite characters, etc…) will have at least one member who will be able to tell you of at least one situation with police officers that started out with flagrant mis-identification and ended up with a drawn weapon or worse.
In case you’re wondering, my story involved being mistaken for a 5’3-6″, 110-140 lb., dark-skinned and heavily tattooed male wearing a bright green tracksuit. I’m 6′ tall, I haven’t see any weight under 150lb. since my junior year of high school, I’m the same complection as Obama, I don’t have any tattoos and I don’t wear bright colors (never mind the fact that I was in the middle of Texas yet don’t speak with anything resembling a Southern accent), but that sure as fuck didn’t prevent me from being dragged out of a diner by a cop. If I’d have done anything to resist, it probably would have ended much worse for me. In comparison, I’ve never been physically assaulted by a legal authority because I decided to wear something like this
http://www.welovefine.com/product.php?id_product=142
in public.
As a geek, I can do things that will differentiate me from the basement-chained undergrowth that characterises our subculture. As a black man, I can do the exact same things over a longer period of time, but I can’t prove that I’m “not” a flighty “coon” or “psycho thug killa ‘brap’ ‘brap’ gangsta” in the time that it would take for a weapon-wielding coward (law appointed or otherwise) to turn me into bloody chunks.
It really disgusts me how so many people are popping up to defend this (and other) Nice Guy.
@zifnab: “Clearly they aren’t that creepy, or the objects of their desire wouldn’t keep them on speed-dial. I’m sorry, but this notion “Unrequited love is sick and wrong!” is such a painfully shallow, outsider-looking-in perspective.”
Stop being disingenuous. The whole idea is that the Nice Guy hides his creepiness for as long as possible in order to obtain the ultimate goal: sex. He pretends to have the girl’s best interests at heart by doing things like always being ready to take her calls.
“On the one hand, I sympathize with girls who think they’ve got a friend only to discover the guy is just interested in the one thing. On the other hand, I’m not sure what gets added to the conversation by screaming “Freak! Freak! Pepper spray him!” Clearly, the guy in question is having a rough time socializing. Using social pressure to emotionally pile-on said guy really just marks you as a Grade A bitch.”
And why is it the girl’s responsibility to hold the hand of this manchild? Really? Getting the fuck away from someone who has been emotionally manipulative and warning others about them makes you a “grade-A bitch?” Why should I care how comfortable my actions make a Nice Guy? Believe it or not, it is NOT a woman’s duty to cater to every man’s desire and comfort, especially with a man who has been dishonest to her. If a Nice Guy reads/hears me ranting about him and realizes how misogynistic his actions are, that’s great! But I certainly am not required to soften my words to make him feel better about it. Your entire post reeks of privilege and entitlement. Speaking of which…
It cannot be emphasized enough that a Nice Guy’s issues stem from a massive sense of entitlement. They believe that they have the right to own a woman’s body in every aspect, especially sexually. They never stop to consider that, “Hey, women have autonomy just like I do, and are free to choose a partner who attracts them. What have I done to make myself desirable to a woman?”
To understand the Nice Guy, you have to realize that they think of women’s bodies like pieces of property that can bought. In this case the currency is not $$$, but is being “Nice”: being a shoulder she can lean on, listening to her problems, etc. If the Nice Guy pays up with this special currency, he is then entitled to the woman’s body for a fuck.
The reason they become so infuriated when these girls start a relationship with someone else (the “Asshole”) is similar to the reason you would be enraged if you finally paid off your house after many years and the realtor promptly kicked you out and gave it to someone else for free.
What Nice Guys don’t understand is that being nice to a woman is not the precursor to a relationship. It is a common courtesy that is expected of everyone. Asking a woman if she wants to be in a relationship is the precursor to a relationship.
Jade- a woman owns her body so she owns her voice and she can ask the guy for a relationship. And just because you say the “Nice Guys” ultimate goal is simply sex and nothing more doesn’t mean you’re right
Zifnab: unrequited love =/= friendship with ulterior motives. You don’t seem to grasp exactly what Nice Guys are. They are entitled assholes who think that no doesn’t necessarily have to mean no. They are potentially dangerous and should absolutely be avoided at all costs.
ladypeyton if women were avoiding nice guys we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place.
zob: It’s important to distinguish that nice guys and Nice Guys are two entirely different types of guys.
But once we correct for type, yes there would be less of a problem if Nice Guys were avoided the moment they identified themselves as such. For one thing the negative reinforcement might cause them to change their ways. Sadly, since they don’t tend to wear name tags and identify themselves on sight, the best we can do is publicly discuss how inappropriate and unacceptable their behavior is in hopes that they will get a clue.
@Wafflebox
Just posting this video would have sufficed, but thank you for sharing your personal perspective and struggle. Very heartfelt and eye-opening for the rest of us.
Peyton, I don’t believe in nice people.
Let me try to simplify difference between them. Women say they want nice guys so group of males that cannot compete for alpha male status go for that trait. Those are “Nice Guys”. Some mothers condition their male children to be perfect mates and for some reason they too believe they wanted a nice guy for mate. Those kids grow up to be “nice guys”. In the end they both are pretty much the same thing (unless they are gay)
It doesn’t really matter which is which. Nice guy syndrome occurs mostly out of familiarity (or misunderstood kindness). Being close to an opposing gender for a long period of time triggers some kind of possession instinct, jealousy etc. And people start to believe that they love those persons. Regardless of that baggage who do you actually love is dependent of your and your future mates hormonal make-up. If you find someone suitable you’ll fall in love with that person. And even if that person is a grade a asshole you’ll still love him because your body will tell you to do so. Meanwhile dumping that emotional baggage to your friends including the nice guy. And he’ll resent you for it. And you know the rest of the story.
Point is it’s all natural, whining is stupid and we are all evil bastards. So stay away from nice guys unless they are gay.
I was always too scared to ask anyone out as a kid because of shit like this. The way people are dehumanized and called “creeps” and “freaks” for awkwardly attempting to form a relationship with another human being preemptively stopped me from getting close to others.
I missed a lot of chances to really get to know people because of this.
I wish I had been more assertive and hadn’t let all of this internet vitriol stop me from trying. To those of you lashing out, please stop being afraid of things that make you uncomfortable. We’re all human.
[…] the whole “Nice Guy” topic came up again, well after the initial post had become a thing of legend. Many people jumped in on the new […]
“To those of you lashing out, please stop being afraid of things that make you uncomfortable. We’re all human.”
You’re going to have to qualify what you mean there. For women, being afraid of things that make them uncomfortable is often a preventative against getting raped.
If it’s just somebody who’s somewhat socially awkward, sure. But I’m not going to leave myself in a situation I feel afraid in just because it might hurt the guy’s feelings.
You guys. You guys, you guys, you guys.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting sex. There’s nothing wrong with unrequited love. Nobody is saying those things are bad.
Where it crosses into ‘creepy asshole’ territory is when you start thinking that the unrequitedness of your love is due to some character defect on the other party’s behalf, and posting long, bitter rants about it on the internet. Mature people don’t do that. Mature people, once they realize that the other person does not return their affections, buck the fuck up and move on.
Excuse me, is that guy up there justifying himself being a Nice Guy by saying that there are a lot of women that take advantage of that?
And what are you doing there? Taking revenge for all the other men out there? If you think that bitch is taking advantage of you, get away from her, stop whining and go find a decent woman.
Apart from that to everyone that defends these nice guys, as a guy in a related article said, imagine you (a strait male) having a male friend who is supportive and does all of kinds nice things for you. He is a best friend. Suddenly he reveals that he is attracted to you and feels that because of him being so nice to you, you have to have a relationship with him. How is that?
Also being socially awkward is a whole different story from being nice in exchange for a relationship (or even just sex). And women don’t have it better than men. We are in a transitional period in the relationships of the genders. We don’t have a set of rules of how to show interest and get the guy without looking desperate or too aggressive either. We are insecure and socially awkward too. Some of us deal with it, some of us use doormat guys.
Thank god this “girls have cooties” way of mind has started to fade away and boys and girls these days hung out with each other and learn to communicate.