Holly's Dating Tips for Guys Part 3: The Delusional "Nice Guy" Trap

There’s a really horrible National Lampoon movie called Stoned Age. It’s absolutely, hands-down one of the worst movies ever made and absolutely not worth a single minute of your time. Nevertheless, I admit I’ve actually seen it and since it's about two-dimensional cavemen I’m going to use it to illustrate an argument about the “dogged nice guy” rather than use real-life examples (who I might humiliate). Stoned Age follows a protagonist, Ishbo the caveman, as he pines away after Fardart who has told him since childhood she’s in love with his dimwit older brother, Thudnik.

Ishbo is an overweight, fairly unattractive male who believes he’s the smartest man in the tribe. Because the movie is told from his point of view, naturally we only see scenes in which he demonstrates in some way his mental superiority over his fellow man. In demonstrating what is basically his only redeeming quality, while the rest of the cavemen in the movie turn to clubbing women over the head for sex, Ishbo fancies himself something a romantic, preferring to wait until his dreamgirl, Fardart also wanted him back.

Who Is Fardart? A beautiful blue-eyed blond Ishbo has been in love with since childhood. What do we know about Fardart? She’s beautiful and blue-eyed. Oh, and in love with Ishbo’s older brother. During the entire movie, we learn only these three things about Fardart’s character. We know she’s beautiful. Blue-eyed. And blond. Oh, and totally not in any way in love with Ishbo.


Thudnik. Portrayed as the alpha male, Thudnik is muscular and athletic. A caveman jock, if you will. Thudnik demonstrates his apparent stupidity by constantly calling Ishbo’s inventions stupid. Nevertheless, he is beloved by the tribe and will grow up to be their leader, much to Ishbo’s dismay.


Alright, so here’s a cast of characters living out a plot obviously written by a Dogged Nice Guy. Meanwhile, since I can’t name a single nerdy guy in my life who at some point this didn’t honestly reflect his life, so I’ll also link it to another trope, Give Geeks a Chance.What’s usually the main problem in this scenario? Well, there’s more than one problem. There are actually three.


First, Fardart’s character is singled out as the best female in the tribe by both Ishbo and Thudnik. And like many movies with this trope, we have literally no idea what would make her the best woman in the tribe aside from the clear and obvious fact that she’s attractive. Maybe this makes complete sense to the male audience and I’m missing the point, but really, why is she the best? Now, in real life, I’ve asked this many times to friends who have confided in me their feelings for some female. Most often, said female is objectively a pretty great person with a lot going on in for her. However, subjectively when seen through the unreliable narration of my friend, she’s made out to be much, much more than that. She’s perfect. I say this knowing full well that no girl I have ever known is perfect, and yet, my god how many girls I’ve known to be described to me as perfect. How blind I must be.

In the moment, nerds who fall for a beautiful girl have this tendency to think her everything he has ever wanted in a woman as if being born with long eyelashes and blonde hair guaranteed her place among the gods. But part of this is pure halo effect, when infatuation goggles make men see things that aren’t really there and miss things that might be apparent to everyone else with eyes (see: bitch in sheep’s clothing). When I know the girl in question, it’s pretty frustrating for me to reconcile what I do know about a person (because they are real people) with what the guy sees her as.

Second, the audience is supposed to recognize Ishbo’s apparent unattractiveness and nevertheless, perhaps as an act of wishful thinking on the part of the writer, see past this (despite seeing nothing of value about Fardart except her beauty). Here, just as we have no reason to believe Fardart to be as perfect as Ishbo sees her, we have no reason to believe why Fardart—or any girl for that matter—should be with Ishbo. Instead, a careful viewer might start to suspect that Ishbo’s notion of himself as a “nice guy” may not be wholly accurate (Note: I promise, entry on this subject to come soon). In fact, the careful viewer may begin to see Ishbo’s justification for why Fardart should be with him and when seen from the outside of Ishbo's head, it’s scary. Ishbo believes Fardart to be so truly special, so truly unique that only *he*, being so specially, uniquely suited to her, can understand her. So inevitably, she will some day realize this and accept they’re destined to be together. Wait, what?

Third, we are meant to see Ishbo’s brother Thudnik as a boilerplate machomale meathead. Sure, I mean, for a movie about cavemen, he probably is an idiot. But I’m going to use this as an opportunity to explore my experience with the alpha-male/anti-alpha-male complex as a phenomenon in social experience. Anti-Alphas like Ishbo focus entirely on the negatives of popular males and in so doing, never realize what makes them attractive to females.This is almost tragic.


Popular males are, by definition, popular. They may be popular in some circles because they’re great at sports or can benchpress a baby elephant, but for the most part, popular males I have seen are popular because they’re charismatic and sociable. Adult men become popular by being gifted conversationalists, outgoing to strangers and yes, much to the disbelief of "nice guys" everywhere often kind to even to the unpopular or *gasp* not-so-hot girls. They are never wanting for someone to talk to when they walk into a room because they can talk to anyone there; they don’t stand in the corner by the drinks nervously guarding his body with his red solo cup, lest anyone even try to approach him (seriously, watch yourself next time at a party and see if you’re doing this. Your body language screams: DON’T TOUCH ME!!!!).


Anyway, Mr. Popular’s easy charm is what wins him the favor of ladies everywhere. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched friends fall for the guy who can walk into a party and introduce himself with confidence to people he’s never met. He doesn’t need an introduction. He doesn’t need an invitation. He’s not demonstrating insecurities by circling the wagons with a group of beta males and talking about sports or playing flip-cup. He’s not puppy-dogging a poor girl the entire night, scarily tiptoeing into creeper territory. He’s smiling, laughing and generally catching the curious eyes of every girl present. Why? Because he’s demonstrating his prowess and not advertising his flaws. If he’s a comedian, he's telling jokes. If he’s a listener, he excites his neighbors with thoughtful, engaging questions. If he’s an adventurer, he’s wowing an audience with his exploits. Really, if I had to simplify this anymore than I am, he’d be the songbird with the best damn mating call in the forest. But Ishbo will always see Thudnik as a meathead. And that’s the problem with unreliable narrators because we always see things as they want us to see them.

So we have three basic problems with this trope that play out over and over again in Real Life. The first is infatuation-goggles, most recently evidenced in 500 Days of Summer, when a beautiful female is misread into something she isn’t because a poor guy (or many poor guys) project a wish upon her rather than get to know the real thing. The second is the classic Dogged Nice Guy problem of men twisting logic so deftly to create justifications for why a girl caught in infatuation-goggles will someday right herself and fall for him, too. Finally, the last problem is the apparent denial on the part of the nice guy to really assess the social reasons which lead women to find popular guys romantically appealing.

I’m guessing if you pushed me, I could write an entire book about the subject given virtually all of my guy friends at some point have fallen into this trap. That, and the fact that I’ve seen basically every 80’s movie ever. Well, that said, what can be done? I’m not really sure. Having been the rational friend in these situations and spent what as of now must amount to days trying to talk my nerdy friends down from this heightened delusion, I can say I have about a 0% success rate. My theory, of course, is that the delusion is so strong, I must be seen as the stereotypical jealous female trying to sabotage true love because why else would I be snapping cupid’s arrow in two. I can say with the benefit of hindsight that I was never actually jealous female and have, honestly, never really been attracted to any of my nerdy friends (I know, it’s sad).

But I’ve tried asking other guys what they’d say to a friend showing signs of “nice guy” delusion. And they’re honestly just as clueless. One friend told me he associates this behavior only with men aged 14-22, “because lot of shut-in men get their ideas about romance and relationships from movies and TV instead of real life,” he adds. But I’m still witnessing this behavior in men well into their late twenties, so I know it’s still out there. I’m not sure what the cure is. I know movies like the upcoming She’s Out of My League and shows with the Ugly Guy Hot Wife trope aren’t helping. The unfortunate thing about nice guy delusion is that so many guys I know narrow their scope so small, they never see all the other women around them who are such better matches. They’ll never even meet them, lest in their minds cheat on their dream girl by allowing new females into their lives. In the end, though I haven't much to say about how to deal with this, this is one of the saddest things I ever see happen in the dating lives of men and I sorely wish something would put an end to it.