Ian On The Red Dot

This advice is an extension of what my mom shared with me a long time ago about finding the right girl to be my wife. The advice was to observe how the girl treated people she did not profess to love. So for example, at a restaurant, see how your date treats the waitress. A similar logic could be applied to gals. For a girl, to gauge the character of a guy, see how he treats other people who usually don’t get a lot of attention in a group. In other words, see how he treats the shy and ugly girls.

If you have been to enough orientation camps, you will notice that one group of people generally stop coming for group activities after the main orientation camp is over. Those people who slowly fall at the wayside are typically the shy and ugly girls. If you are shy and pretty, don’t worry, the group won’t forget you, especially the guys. If you are ugly but not shy, your personality will not allow you to fall away, especially if you are damn gungho.

I know, I know. Generalizations. Sure. But take a look. A real good look and you might admit that there is some grain of truth in what I’m saying. If you look at what happens during orientation, you will notice that guys would gravitate to the prettier gals. Of course the pretty gals won’t spare their time for all guys, so those that don’t get any attention will move on to the next tier of girls and then so on and so on.

Now, girls, if you want to see the character of a guy, see if he gravitates towards only the more outgoing or prettier girls. See if he makes an effort to include the shy ones (be it a guy or girl) into the conversations and group activities. See if he makes an effort with the ones considered ‘ugly’ by our harsh society.

So how do you be the nicest and hottest guy at a party?

Talk to the wallflowers. I know, I know, some of you snobs out there are going to say there are just some people who shouldn’t self-invite themselves to parties. Or even if they were invited, they should realized they were asked just out of courtesy and should know their place by rejecting the invitation.

Ever been to a party and hear the more ‘happening’ ones ask their friends why ’so and so’ were doing there.

It isn’t a crime for someone to want to step out of their comfort zone and try something new. It isn’t wrong for the shy or the ugly to want to party. But hey, we live in a cruel cruel world where we like to shove people like prisoners into a definition and force them to stay there. Anyone trying to escape from their place in society will be shot.

So guys, if you see that girl at the corner, the one hunched over her drink, whether she is pretty, ugly, shy, weird or what, make an effort to talk to her. Don’t let yourself be pulled to the center of all the action. Girls, guys will always treat you nicely if they want something from you. I can’t tell you how irritated I get when a female friend tells me that ‘I really like him because he treats me so well’. Duh! Only an idiot will treat you badly if he wants something from you. Please. Stop and see how he treats people he wants nothing from or has no need of anything from.

Now, where am I going with this.

One more little meandering musing. When I was in JC, there was this group of guys from a particular sport. The hot girls like to hang out with them. Let’s call them the JOCKs. The hot girls and the other people who hung out with them never had a bad word about this group of guys. Individually, they weren’t assholes. In fact, individually some were really nice guys but as a group they could be quite mean to other people.

Now, the rest of the school were either neutral or disliked them. I can’t say what the breakdown is. The point is this - the JOCKs aren’t universally liked and tend to only be liked by people who are in their clique.

Sometimes, the criticisms against the JOCKs and people who liked/supported them were unfair. For example, someone might say, ‘you only like them because you are hot and they don’t do anything bad to you.’ Or someone might say, “Those guys are only nice to the hot people.’ You can’t blame people for how they want to choose their friends. The funny thing is, even though these JOCKs didn’t do anything bad to the people who criticized them, that didn’t mean a thing. The fact that mattered was that the JOCKs didn’t treat everyone with that extra special favor. Like I said, humans are a sad species - we use our own inadequacies as a basis to find fault with other people.

I had a few friends who were universally liked in the school. Rarely a bad thing was said about them. And one thing I noticed about these friends were that they had a tendency to be inclusive. No special favors were bestowed to a subset of the school population. Everyone was treated with respect.

Ok, so finally to the main point. Whatever that has happened with Nuffnang has managed to get Techcrunch’s attention. Nuffnang really should learn a little from ‘JC 101′. If your business is in making a few people feel special and that is all you need, then fine. Continue treating a few bloggers a little better and let them always be your supporters. If however, it is important for everyone to like you if not love you, then to continue doing stuff which may generate the perception that some bloggers are being treated better won’t help you.

It may be an unfair perception, but the business world isn’t fair. What ever the validity of the criticisms about the processing fee, the point is this - why aren’t you universally loved? And why is it that the words of your supporters like Estee draws so much flak.

I don’t know the answers. But I do want to propose this. This might not really be a Nuffnang versus competitors versus bloggers issue. It could possibly be an issue with how people feel about themselves and how they would like to be treated within the context of a group. Which is special where special means the same as everyone else even though by whatever measurements you use I might not deserve it.

Update:

1. In my opinion, if you have the tendency to show favoritism, it is easier to get detractors.

2. Nicest - Those who didn’t expect you to invest time and energy to converse with them will feel flattered and likely to think you are a nice guy.

3. Sexiest - Those who expect everyone to be attracted to them like moths to a flame will be wondering why the hell you are different and some female friends has shared that apparently different is sexy.