I'm not nice

and that's OK

Readers—This is a modified version of a “note” I put out on Substack after a typical encounter in which my interlocutor urged me to be “nicer” about something. This is not aimed at anyone personally, and I ask you, readers, please not to personalize it.

But I do also ask you to please contemplate it. Social norms today favor artificial and unhelpful “niceness”. The deck is stacked against not-nice, candid people. We don’t usually get a hearing. Few ask us why we choose this approach. Almost no one ever credits us with having a point, or of having any use to other people.

”Nice” people are not only unfair to candid people, they’re downright mean and uncharitable.

I’m tired of it, and this is what I have to say about that. Thank you for reading.

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Friends, adversaries, readers, haters, lovers, whatever you are: I’m not “nice.”

I don’t do “nice.” I don’t tiptoe. I don’t monitor my tone every second to accommodate the most sensitive feelings of others.

I’m blunt. I prefer candid confrontation, and I believe the world needs much more of that, not less.

That’s my personality. It’s not going to change.

It makes me feel gross to have to say this, but some require a glurgy display of emotions before they’re able to hear what I have to say, so here it is.

I care deeply and emotionally about the issues I talk about. When you’re not looking, I weep a lot. Yes, actual tears. For children, for families, for people who are truly trapped in awful situations. You don’t see it because it’s unseemly to cry in public, but rest assured, I have the same tender emotions you do.

In ways you’ll never know about because they’re my private business, I materially, financially, and emotionally help people. A lot.

Now. That was my pre-defense; I am deliberately trying to trigger your empathetic identification with me so that you’ll be able to hear something a little harsher. I shouldn’t have to do that, but experience tells me that I do. I hope it worked.

Don’t tell me how to speak. Don’t monitor my “tone.” Don’t shush me. Don’t use feminine disapproval of my approach. Don’t talk to me about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar.

The most reliable way to make me tune you out and dislike how you act is to put emotional pressure on me to be “nicer.”

Do it once and you get a warning bite. Do it twice and there’s no further discourse between us.

Mind your own business. Mind your own approach.

I don’t care if you don’t like my candor. I’m not requiring you to like it. If I’m not to your taste, believe it or not, I actually get that.

But that’s who I am. It’s not going to change.

And I will take your attempt to “nudge” me to be nicer as an act of provocation to which I will respond accordingly.