Comments on: Too Nice?

By: Kate

Kate — Thu, 05 May 2011 20:31:55 +0000

I find it really sad that people are called ‘too nice’ and this is considered a bad trait. Often people tell me this about myself and tell me that I ought to change, be less generous. The thing is, how often do we tell someone ‘you’re too mean, stop taking advantage of people’? Maybe people think it’s okay to tell a ‘too nice’ person such a thing because they do not expect them to argue. Being told that not only do you have a particularly irritating trait (which usually, the person doesn’t realise they’re doing) it’s all YOUR own fault. Tricky situation!

By: Bethany

Bethany — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:06:37 +0000

I agree, Eddie. We shouldn’t all accept meanness (for lack of a better term) simply because being “too nice” is annoying to some. What I think it boils down to is the difference between being genuinely nice versus faking niceness to others.

By: Eddie

Eddie — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 04:18:02 +0000

Maybe a person is “too nice” if the others find a gesture purely irritating and nothing else. To clarify an otherwise confused and confusing sentence: if I see you smiling all the time at everyone, I might think that you have ulterior motives, I might be jealous that you seem so happy, I might even find it irritating, but if I feel at least some joy when you smile at me, then you’re not being “too nice.” If I don’t even feel an inkling of happiness, then, at least to me, you’re too nice (to the point of obnoxiousness and only obnoxiousness). Of course, I’m not the only observer who matters, and others can disagree with me and (rightly) call me out as being too cynical/irritating/unpleasant. So in a sense, niceness partly depends on the reception of the community, independent of the nice person’s intentions, but the community includes so many people that it seems awfully hard for anyone to be, conclusively, “too nice.”

…I suspect that the whole point of my comment can be reduced to this: Keep smiling, because someone will smile back.