"I concocted a plan to prove how boring life would be if you were just nice all the time..."

"... how much more bracing it is to have sweetness laced with tartness. I told them I would be very, very nice until they asked me to stop, certain that they’d get sick of saccharine and syrupy in short order. Except they didn’t. They liked it."

Says Maureen Dowd, about her 10-year-old self.

People may be bored by all niceness all the time, but they still appreciate (and maybe take advantage of) those who opt to perform perfect sweetness. One can always find amusing edge in somebody else, even keeping the very nice person around for company and for snuggles later.

"It’s possible that the myth of the lone genius on his crag is so romantic that readers, authors, and critics can’t help but subscribe to it, at least somewhat."

"I don’t care for it a bit myself, and subscribe instead to the Edward Lear view: 'You earnest Sage! aloud they cried, your book you’ve read enough in!/We wish to chop you into bits to mix you into Stuffin’!')"

From an essay by Maria Bustillos about whether book reviewers ought to be nice.

"I didn't know I was skinny-fat until my Russian boyfriend told me so."

"Actually, I didn't even know that was a thing until he told me so."

The longer I stared at myself, the more I began to notice what it was that made Julio cringe. My chest was dystrophic. My arms were unformed. My neck was frail. Skin hung over the band of my underwear and, on top of that, I was hairy. Everywhere.

Yes, we're talking about 2 men here, but that doesn't let you heterosexual men off the hook. That just means that if your love partner wasn't female, he might tell you some things she's thinking but is too nice to say.

"What caused NBC’s Meet the Press to fall behind Face the Nation and This Week?"

Jennifer Rubin tries to answer the question. She's got a list of 8 things, and I especially like:

2. Bob Schieffer has gotten feisty. He zings administration guests, asks probing questions, and gives snappy commentary. Given the choice between a Schieffer and a Gregory interview, I’d watch the former every time.

I agree! I think Schieffer got angry about Susan Rice lying on all the talk shows about Benghazi. He's been on fire since then. He's so old, so I was assuming he was coasting, but he woke up.

Something Rubin doesn't have on her list is: David Gregory is too concerned about being nice. He's always smiling and getting along with the guests. That is not what Tim Russert did. Russert intimidated the guests. He cornered them, often using a brilliant sequence of quotes displayed on screen. Very entertaining! Russert seemed to be directing the show toward us, the audience. Gregory seems more to be letting us watch while he socializes with his Washington friends.

"SYMPATHY FOR THE NICE GUYS OF OKCUPID."

That all-caps at Instapundit comes across as a comic misspelling of "Occupied," but the nice guys in question are at OKCupid. I'm not sure which purportedly "nice guys" deserve more sympathy, if any.

Here's the underlying linked-to article by Rachel Hills in The Atlantic. It's a critique of the critique of guys who cite their niceness as a reason why they can't get girlfriends.