Why You Should Be A Nice Person
By Thoughtis
Nice people are becoming extinct. These days whenever I meet someone who is genuinely kind, I stand back in awe and have a desire to preserve them in a museum somewhere—The Nice Person Museum, No More Mr. Nice Guys? I don’t know about the name but I do know that it would have to be in New York somewhere so all of the jerks in this city can go and look at them, and feel really bad about their judgmental attitudes.
I’m not nice. I mean, I am in the sense that I have a good heart and care about people, but I’m too critical and judgmental to truly earn that adjective. I’m too offended by people’s shortcomings to be an actual nice person. I’ve tried to change this about myself but at this point, it’s become part of my job description to observe and comment on people’s behaviors. That alone immediately makes me exempt from being nice. That being said, I really resent how socially acceptable it has become for everyone to behave like evil nightmares. The worst part is that most of these mean people are also stupid. Being stupid and mean is a dreadful combination but it gets more prevalent each and every day. Bitchy comments dominate people’s Twitters and Facebook walls, and it’s usually coming from the person who has this on their about me page: i’M A bItCh, TaKe IT OR lEAve iT mUAH!” I’ll leave it, thanks.
It seems like everyone holds being nice in a high regard but no one actually wants to be known as The Nice Person. And who could blame them? It has been engrained in our culture that being nice gets us nowhere. We finish last, we become the boring friend in our social circle. It’s like the kiss of death. And in some cases, it’s a fair assumption. People are interesting because of their opinions, because they have something to say. Nice people are often assumed to have no opinions. They don’t say anything bad about someone, they won’t talk talk crap, which is like the ultimate sin for a twenty-something to commit. If you can’t get all gossip girl with someone, your value diminishes and you aren’t to be trusted.
I used to not care about nice people. Like many others, I found them to be dull, but then I realized I was only seeing a specific breed of nice. Believe it or not, there are people who are both kind AND interesting. They show us that saying mean things does not make you interesting. On the contrary, it makes you just like everyone else. What I love about these kinds of nice people is that they have no idea that they’re actually nice. It’s just a part of who they are and how they see things. It’s not a conscious decision, it simply makes up the lens from which they see life. These are the people who give nice a good name and inspire us Judge Judy types to chill our dill and treat each other with respect. Want to be truly subversive in today’s society? Stop saying that catty comment about someone you don’t even know. You’ll be totally controversial.
