[toki5]

Being successful and being nice shouldn't be the same effort -- they are two efforts, unrelated, that sometimes incidentally intertwine, hopefully for the better.

You should be courteous and respectful of human beings -- if you feel that this very concept is somehow detracting from your life in a meaningful way, I suspect that you're misattributing your lack of success. But it's hard to speak on it without any real specific examples.

[Mz]

I probably can't give you specific examples that would make sense to you without seriously shooting myself in the foot. Suffice it to say that getting condescending pats on the head on hn is a personal frustration for me and that folks here who like to see themselves as helpful and often do help others have a track record of crapping on me personally. And it would be really stupid to name names and give links to actual examples.

Edit: And I really feel pretty disrespected by the ugly assumptions you are obviously making about me. I am nice because I believe in it as an ethic, not merely a manipulative thing to do.

[toki5]

I grok frustration, anger -- nobody is perfect. Nobody is nice all the time. But reading something like this (from your blog):

>Just when I was about ready to go on a real tear and swear off niceness forever, the guy in line ahead of me at lunch behaved like just enough of an overprivileged dick that my relatively better mannered behavior resulted in the girl loading up my plate. I had trouble finishing it. So I think I will continue to be polite to folks who handle my food.

... rubs me the wrong way.

>I am nice because I believe in it as an ethic, not merely a manipulative thing to do.

[Mz]

My blog is intended as a safe place to express my personal frustrations with a very difficult life. It seems to be socially Verboten to speak of it anywhere else. I am not trying to make a good impression with it.

I find it ironic and rather ugly that the whole point other people are making is that being courteous pays off in a business way but when I state I am not seeing that I get attacked as not being genuinely polite for the right reasons (i.e. I am failing to genuinely expect nothing in return when these articles and discussions of them focus on the business benefits of so called common courtesy). I suspect part of the problem is that I do genuinely expect nothing in return and that often seems to be exactly what I get.