Well, remember, a lot of these guys have been told their whole lives by girls that they're really nice, since that seems to be the standard euphemism in our culture. Is it really so weird that they would then self identify as that?

This. There are a ton of places that will tell you that you need to be nice and then women will like you, and although being nice is a plus, being nice is neither necessary nor sufficient. You have to be a well-rounded human being.

What we mean there is that if you constantly think "If I do this then so-and-so will do that, so I will do this other thing instead." then you might be attempting to manage their feelings by acting different than who you are to make sure the other person has nothing but positive experiences. It's something lots of…

I do feel sorry for victims of harassment; both the women who are subjected to entitled dudes who don't understand that the ladies in their life don't owe them anything, and the genuinely nice introverts/weird guys who are catching a ton of flack on the internets lately.

You will be happier in life if you waive your right to be righteously indignant to assholes of nearly every kind, and instead exercise your right to be kind to them.

This. Life would be sooooo much better if everyone was willing to share their emotions, and willing to take responsibility for their emotions, and their emotions alone.

But Rosa bullying Boyle is presented as acceptable behavior, repeatedly. I don't think either Boyle's or her behavior is exactly acceptable, but then again the entire show is based on a whole bunch of people doing unacceptable things.

This. And if you're Rosa or maybe a friend of Boyle: Take him aside and let him know how to correct himself. The chances are astronomically high that he hasn't been able to figure it all out on his own.

Oh, I have plenty of issues to work on. But it isn't actually me that I'm worried about… I remember being in high school and college, and the guy I was then, well enough to try to make sure that the actually nice guys who are there now don't go through some of the things that I did.

Actually, my friends and I all had a phase of wondering what was wrong with them that the opposite sex didn't like them, and then we all met some great people and most of us are married now.

Liked for everything except the last two sentences… there are people out there who love you, and rather than being bothered by your feelings, are really sincerely hoping that you will share your feelings with them. So to hell with what the "nice" thing to do is… the healthy and kind thing to do is practice…

Man… see, this is what I'm talking about. As a formerly socially awkward young lad myself, that ain't how it goes. Nice guys don't tend to get mad, they tend to get (VERY) sad when the object of their affections doesn't return the sentiment. And then they get over it, with varying levels of rapidity. There often…

Listen, I totally agree with the middle paragraph there, and it's why I hate romantic comedies so very, very much, and I get what you're saying there.

You do that when you use the words "Nice Guy" and descriptions of what actually nice people do for long periods of time to describe what sociopaths do for VERY short periods of time as a tactic to get to someone they'd like to fuck.

Totes. This one is "older than they think".

I would submit to you that maybe you have jumped the gun on that one, and you often have no way of knowing what someone deserves even long after meeting them, let alone without talking to them at all. And that ascribing sociopathic tendencies to people who are, in all likelihood, merely introverted or socially…

Oh yeah, that worldview is alive and well on the internet. Here's an example: http://kateharding.net/2009… And man… it sounds like an awful way to live life to treat every interaction with the opposite sex as a potential rape scenario. That is not a valid, sensible, or kind thing to do to suggest to young women…

Words have meaning, and if you tell people that being nice is correlated with sociopathy, then they will go "AHA! I HAVE SEEN YOU BEING NICE! YOU ARE UNCOVERED AS A SOCIOPATH!" See also: the idea that black kids in hoodies are correlated with crime. You don't get to just "Oh, we capitalized ours so we wouldn't…

So imagine a world where the Internet has renamed the serial killer the "Nice Guy". Let's even imagine that serial killers were a tiny subset completely contained within "nice guys", so that there were no serial killers who didn't seem nice. The result would, I think, be that absolutely every interaction with anyone…

The thing is… the narrative I have heard is "So and so was nice to some girl for years and years and then when she turned him down he called her a bitch and slashed her tires and…" all that. And I have never, ever seen that pattern in the wild. There are actual sociopaths who will try to be nice to you to get into…