Being nice is overrated.
Not in general – in general – you should be nice.
Being nice is the right thing to do.
But in the phycology of dating, niceness is less important.
You might instead want to focus on being the best at something.
The best at basketball or football might signal great athletic genes.
And the best at debate and chess might signal great intellectual genes.
You might find that standing out from the crowd is more important than being nice.
For example, a man who thinks humans are rational creatures might try to attract a woman by being extra nice. That seems reasonable because people like nice people more than they like mean people. But seduction-wise, niceness is boring, and nice people are a dime a dozen. Niceness can get you only so far. A far better seduction strategy would involve participating in any kind of coed group activities at which you happen to excel. When you display any kind of talent, it triggers other humans to want to mate with you. We’re biologically hardwired to be attracted to anything that helps the gene pool, and talent is a signal for valuable genes. So instead of being nice, focus on being talented, or attractive, or smart, or muscular, or something that suggests you have good genes. A common misconception is that because nice guys seem to finish last and jerky guys seem to get the women, being a jerk must have some sort of seduction advantage. It doesn’t. That’s an illusion caused by the fact that people who have other advantages—such as wealth or beauty—have the freedom to act like jerks because they can attract mates no matter what.
-Scott Adams, Win Bigly
