The argument for and against “Nice”

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Tom Scocca, features editor at Gawker takes on the “newest weapon in the arsenal of privileged” in his recent essay. In response, Malcolm Gladwell writers over at The New Yorker that Being Nice Isn’t Really So Aweful:

In being nice to the world, the writer obliges the world to be nice to him. But Scocca has larger ambitions: he wants to argue that the tyranny of niceness is the defining feature of our age, and he wants to make Dave Eggers the poster child for this movement. And it is here, I think, that his essay falters.

Ashley Perez lives, writes, and causes trouble in Los Angeles. She has a strong affinity for tattoos, otters, cat mystery books, and actual cats, but has mixed feelings about pants. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She runs the literary site Arts Collide and does work of all varieties for Women Who Submit, Entropy, Jaded Ibis Press, and Why There Are Words. You can find her on Twitter at @ArtsCollide. More from this author →