I was having beef¹ with a coworker a few weeks back because he got petty when I had a lot of comments on the quality of his code while reviewing it. It led us down the path of taking each other’s code reviews and just being very verbose and nitpicky, just to waste as much of each other’s time as possible. It was clear that the first person to back down and not take the next Code review would be the loser.
I won by playing to his natural tendency to feel guilty and self-conscious because I kept being very nice and acting like I wasn’t picking up on his passive-aggressiveness. I even baked vegan cookies for the whole team because I know that he feels guilty about not being 100% vegan² and always feels very rejected when he tries to convince other people at work that vegan food is good (everyone loved the cookies).So you can still be nice and inflict psychic damage on your enemies.
~¹ vegan beef lol~
~² I know this because his reaction to me mentioning that I’m vegan was a very guilty “ah, I’m mostly vegan as well, but y’know, mostly just at home because it’s hard and people don’t accept it” – which is totally fine! I really don’t judge people by what they eat, but he showed that he feels self-conscious about it which is a clear point of attack.~I was going to join the criticism of the post, but to be fair, the elites really benefit from us fighting and making enemies of each other…
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There is no amount of nice you can be that will prevent shitty people from doing enemy shit.
Being well armed is as close as you can get to having no enemies.
I was gonna say, people love to take advantage of the nice. Be a nice person, sure, of course! But you’re gonna run into enemies and if you just keep being nice they’ll take you for everything you’ve got and then a little extra.
You’re describing naivety, not nice. Be nice to everyone, until you’re given a reason to stop being nice.
Sounds very Canadian. We are very nice….until we aren’t, then the Geneva Conventions get created.
Just describing my own experience. Maybe I’m naive.
That’s why I open carry at family gatherings. I don’t need to be nice to my extended family as long as they know I’m strapped.
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My only enemy is advertisers
This is why I (nicely 🙂) run all my traffic through an adblocker
My only enemy is adversaries
Unless you happen to live next to russia.
(mostly shitty) people will mistake kindness for weakness.
It’s nice to be nice to the nice, but it’s also nice to be a cunt to the cunts. Be a mirror and reflect their attitude back at them.
Be kind as a starting point, but don’t force yourself to be kind if they’re not kind back. Tit-for-tat game strategy
But starting out with kindness is crucial. As well as being kind again if they start being kind. You must give people the benefit of the doubt
It’s no coincidence that this game theory strategy is highly effective in practice. You could even say that this is the foundation of human society and success
Disagree. Lots of people cover up their shittiness by being nice. Be how you are, be yourself, don’t cater to the world, make the world interesting by being authentically you - unless you’re a conservative, then go fuck yourself.
This Lemmy thread is wild. The post says “being kind is free” , it doesn’t say shitty people aren’t ever nice. Yet several replies are this weird reaction of “no fuck you being nice is dumb”.
Does the mere suggestion - that being kind is a good starting point when interacting with others - cause some sort of defensive reaction here?
“Has no enemies” is the problem
If you have no enemies then you’re friendly with shitty people and good people, simply because it’s easier for you, not because it’s correct to be kind.
I switch to kind when it becomes clear that I’ve offended, or more often, to my surprise, hurt feelings. I didn’t mean to hurt you by not noticing you kinda stuff.
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You don’t have any enemies because you don’t have anything that anybody wants badly enough to take from you by coersion or force. Acquire some wealth and it won’t matter how nice you are, you will have enemies.
Enemies are unavoidable. The bi-directionality of such sentiments is optional, and often a waste of time and effort to keep track of. That’s why we stay strapped.
Just be gay and do gay things. Much easier than acquiring wealth for most of us, a lot of fun in its own right, and you still get the desired enemies. Win, win, win!
Oh, you’re right, there are plenty of other ways to acquire enemies. They’re just mostly stupider than self-interest. Being nice will also not help you with those people.
