Wednesday, August 27, 2014

the art of fake nice

My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.   Mitch Hedberg

this is one of those blogs that may not be for you.  its not a rant, or encouragement, or even at all positive.  so if you are looking for any of those, just stop now.  this is more of a reflection.  couched in a question.  as it applies to me, but mostly to us as a society at large.  and here is the question:  should we teach our kids to be "fake" nice?  should be learn to do it ourselves?  i guess some people are born with it.  like athletic ability or an aptitude for art.  but most people i think, acquire it somewhere along the way.  and clearly some of us don't......and while its all well and good to say "i love that you are so brutally honest", obviously its not necessarily a good thing.

now i know i normally give examples of what i mean, but this subject hits a little too close to home at the moment.  so i'm going more general.  but i hope you still get the point.  i want to know whether its better to just PRETEND to be nice.  because in the generic, lets be nice to everyone way, i think the answer is absolutely YES.  its better to be kind, right?  if you dont want to tell your friend her new hair cut is awful, you just smile and say "omg, i love it".  right?  that i dont really have a problem with.  at all.  we all do it to some degree.  little white lies to spare someone's feelings.  again, i think this falls into the lets all try to be a little nicer to each other category.

what i'm talking about is more pervasive in the "mean girl" sense.  and not that boys dont do it, but its just so much worse with girls.  i have NO IDEA why girls are so mean to each other. but we are.  and it really really sucks.  sometimes it sucks A LOT.  maybe we are insecure or jealous.  maybe we are striking first.  maybe we are just plain old mean.  i have no idea.  what i do know is that its WORSE, sometime a million times worse, when we pretend to be nice first.

i have always been a "you love me or hate me" kind of girl.  i've attributed to that mostly to that brutally honest gene that i inherited straight from my mother (thanks for that, mom).  but you always know where you stand with me.  i try to be nice.  really i do.  obviously i'm not always successful.  but what i will say about me is generally i wont say anything behind your back that i wouldnt or havent already said to your face.  i am NOT the girl to ask does this make me look fat.  because if it does, i'm going to tell you it does.  you know why?  i'd want my friend to tell me.  id rather you not lie to be nice.  you know why?  because as soon as i wear whatever that is that makes me look fat, there are going to be 5700 mean girls out there talking about how fat i look.  right?  we all know this is true.

True friends stab you in the front. ~Oscar Wilde

and i KNOW i can be mean.  it hardly makes it any better just because i acknowledge it.  the part i struggle with is knowing i have that in me and trying to be better about it.  doesnt mean i dont talk about other people or what i think their flaws are.  i'm human.  and a GIRL.  hello.  what i dont do - or try really really hard not to do - is PRETEND to be nice to them while i'm doing it.  why does this matter?  maybe it doesnt.  i dont know.  somehow it just seems wrong.

but i am obviously in the minority.  or at least it seems that way.  so maybe i'm the one looking at it wrong. my circle of friends has always been pretty small - and its getting smaller.  as ive gotten older my bullshit tolerance has lowered significantly.  and along with it, my ability to "put on" that nice face.  that doesnt mean i cant be nice (i dont think) - it just means i'm not going out of my way anymore to be nice to people who are not nice to me. i dont know.  maybe i never did.  and maybe i should.  because its becoming increasingly obvious with the onslaught of social media that "pretend" friends are the new actual friends.

Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend. ~Plautus

which is why im wondering at my advanced age, that maybe i just missed the class on this virtual friendship thing.  is fake nice a skill we are learning at the hands of the internet?  is "liking" your posts and pictures the new gateway to solving all of our friendship woes?  i can trash talk you all day, but if i "like"  your stuff, i'm still a good person? somehow i think this is what we are learning.  its a lot easier to be nice AND mean by text or type.  so we let our online personas do the work. but its misleading.  maybe.  or maybe i'm just old.

believe me, i like to be liked.  i like having friends.  but obviously not enough.  because at the end of the day, i'd rather have 4 real friends than 400 fake ones.  and i'm realizing that i'm totally in the minority in that way of thinking.  i have just come to understand that most people would rather have 400 fake friends.  400 people who will like and comment and post and smile to their face in public.  it doesnt actually matter what those people really think.  because as long as i THINK they are friends, then they are. right??

so i think its actually a new life skill.  that passed me by.  clearly.  and its one i wont be jumping on the bandwagon of.  i'll take my 4 real friends thank you very much.  and somehow, i'll try to teach my kids how to figure out the difference in this crazy world they are being raised in.  virtual reality is just that.  VIRTUAL. if all of the sudden you lose your internet connection, will you still have ACTUAL friends?  friends that will still love you when you tell them they absolutely can not wear stripes?  and friends you will love back when they tell you you are being a bitch,  or your arms look like a dudes?  THESE are the friends i want.

Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty. ~Sicilian Proverb

i think there is a fine line most everyone walks between not being mean and being fake nice.  i think in our next incarnation we should all have to wear signs.  one that will say "please be nice to me, i need the encouragement".  the other will say "save your bullshit, i dont need it".

in case  any of you are wondering - i'm wearing the 2nd one.