Approx date of origin of Nice Guy meme?

Factual Questions
1

How long ago was the phrase “nice guys” first strongly associated with self-designated nice guys whining that women unfairly prefer jerkish guys and that the nice guys should be getting the girls instead, and either trying to use this line of argument as a means of persuading women to be with them or flinging it at them as a kind of verbal assault?

Would this have existed as something folks were acquainted with as long ago as 1980, or did it only really show up as a meme sort of thing somewhat later? I don’t mean the behavior, but the whole notion or concept of the behavior being summarized up and labeled “nice guys”?

2

Well, a “nice guy” as being something undesirable dates back at least to 1946, when Leo Durocher said “The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place.” (since corrupted to “Nice guys finish last”). Though there, the context is baseball-- I don’t know when the concept was first applied to romance.

3

I’m pretty sure the general concept predates our split from chimpanzees.

4

About the same time that someone first uttered the word “meme.”

5

Who refer to theirs as “wimp chimps.”

6

It’s a pretty sure bet that a nice guy nerd invented the club.

7

Again, I’m not talking about the notion that nice guys finish last or whatever.

I am talking specifically about being able to utter the phrase “nice guys” and everyone in the room kind of winces and the room quickly fills with anecdotes about guys who self-label as “nice guys” (or some variant) and who match this description. Specific to the use of the phrase “nice guys” to mean THAT.

Unless, of course, y’all are saying that it would have always conjured up that reaction, whether in 2003 or 1973 or 1923 or whatever.

8

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I did a little poking around in Google Groups to see when the “nice guy” meme started turning up on Usenet.

I can’t figure out how to limit Groups searches by year or do oldest-to-newest chronological sorting. My admittedly superficial research turned up a lot of “nice guy” discussion in the mid-1990s, but the debate was mostly limited to the question of whether women are really more attracted to jerks. The idea of “nice guys” as an inherently pejorative label didn’t really coalesce until the early 2000s, say around 2003-2004. That’s when you start seeing posts about how “nice guys” are passive, clingy, etc.

I also checked Lexis-Nexis to see when this started turning up in popular media, and found pretty much the same trend. I found plenty of nice-guy articles in the 1990s, but the blame was firmly centered on women who pursued jerks and bad boys. In the early 2000s the tide starts to turn against the self-identified nice guys.

If you’re looking for a specific turning point, I’d say it was in 2003 with the publication of the book No More Mr. Nice Guy, written by psychologist Robert Glover. That book received a lot of press and got people talking about “nice guy syndrome.”

What I have not found yet is the first mention of how “nice guys” view romantic relationships transactionally, i.e., “I’ve been a loyal friend to you, so you should reward me with sex.” That seems to be the central concept of the current “nice guy” meme. I haven’t read Glover’s book so I don’t know if he identified that.

9

There’s been a shift from when my teenage sisters gossiped about boys back in the 1950s. Back then a “nice guy” had nothing to offer other than being nice. There was no undertone of passive-aggressive insecurity because girls didn’t care enough about the guy to delve that deeply into his psyche.

However, in 1990 Christine Lavin wrote a song titled “Sensitive New Age Guy” which totally nailed the NICE GUY stereotype.

I’m 61 and I never, ever recall the term being used as a compliment.

10

Looking at Google N-Gram Viewer, the combination “Nice Guy” is essentiaslly nonexistent prior to 1920. At that time it means a guy who is “nice”, as opposed to a boor or a bully.

The meaning of the “Nice Guy” who doesn’t get the girls seems to start circa 1990 (when the phrase “No more Mr. Nice Guy” gets thrown around a lot).
By the way, the OP says:

I’ve only heard the term used in complaining mode, to friends. I can’t imagine anyone trying to use it to persuade women to be with them, or as verbal assault. It seems to me that it’s too whiny to be effective in either office.

11

The phrase “no more Mr. Nice Guy” is waaaay older than 1990. Alice Cooper had a song with that title way back in the early '70s, and I’m sure the phrase predates that by decades.

12

Take a look at this Facebook exchange that was being circulated a few months ago as a classic example of “nice guy syndrome.”

13

That was awesome.

14

Not saying it originated about 1990, but Google N-gram shows a lot of use then.

I only had a quick look, but I didn’t see much of “No more Mr. Nice Guy” from 1920 until much later. I suspect it’s not “decades” earlier than 1970. Maybe not even one decade.
In fact, a quick check of Google Ngram shows the earliest use at 1963, but REALLY taking off at 1970.

15

I don’t think you could do this even today and expect a room full of people to understand what you meant. I’ve only seen the term “nice guy” used as shorthand for something like “a self-described ‘nice guy’ who’s actually a creep but blames his lack of success with women on women supposedly not liking nice guys” on the Internet.

Even on the Internet it’s often written with scare quotes, capitalized, or with a ™ after it to make it clear to the reader that one is referring to a self-proclaimed “Nice Guy ™” and not a guy who is actually nice.

16

UK-doper here and until recently that’s the only degree of insult I ever ascribed to this term: by describing someone as “nice” and not handsome, smart, whatever, you’re implying they are not those other things.

Nice guy as only meaning self-labeled nice guy, I only got from this board, about last year.

Which is a shame because often I do want to refer to genuinely nice guys, who do not use the term self-referentially.

17

Around here the term I usually hear to refer to a kind, gentle, good-hearted person (male or female) is “sweetheart” or “sweetie.”

18

Well, I was referring to that behavior being a recognized thing before English, and probably before language. In chimpanzee groups, and hypothetical Australopithecus bands, the aggressive dominant male tries to monopolize the females, but some males who do not try to displace the dominant male still try to mate with females on the sly by winning them over with non-dominant behaviors. Undoubtedly the unsuccessful ones sometimes complained that being nice and non-dominant hadn’t worked for them, just like the “nice guys” under discussion here. It is an ancient dynamic of primate behavior.

If you’re asking when English-speaking Americans first took note of the phenomenon, I would say “July 4, 1776,” or whenever you define Americans as coming into official existence. If you’re asking when the concept was discussed on the Internet, I would assume the first nerds designing Arpanet griped about chicks not rewarding them while they were setting up their servers.

19

Back in the 1970s, years before I ever started dating girls, before I ever thought the concept might apply to me, I remember loads of articles in newspapers and women’s magazines saying “WHERE ARE THE NICE MEN?” and “WHY CAN’T I FIND A NICE GUY?” and “ALL I WANT IS A NICE GUY- WHY DO I KEEP MEETING JERKS?”

The bottom line is, we have two different people who aren’t coming clean about what they really want, and end up making themselves AND each other miserable as a result. You have

  1. Attractive, confident, outgoing female who thinks she deserves an attractive, prosperous, confident alpha male husband, but hasn’t had any luck finding one. The confident, attractive guys she HAS met just want one thing, and she keeps ending up dumped and heartbroken. She then whines to her Mom, friends and Dear Abby “I just want a nice man- why can’t I find one.” But in reality, she doesn’t want “just” a nice man- she wants a nice man who’s also well-off, handsome, virile, confident and sexy.

  2. Nerdy, shy beta male who is enamored of that woman, probably has no chance with her,but gets his hopes up because he’s heard that woman saying she just wants a nice guy, and foolishly thinks that means he has a chance with her.

Nice nerd, however, doesn’t come right out and say what he wants (a relationship, sex, love, marriage…). He lingers around the woman, doing her favors, making her laugh (if he can), and taking every smile as a sign that she likes him the way he likes her.

And she doesn’t come right out and say what she really thinks, either (“No way in hell are we ever hooking up, Poindexter!”). Maybe she finds the attention flattering, or maybe she really DOES like the guy as a quirky friend to have an occasional lunch and coinversation with. But she’s never going to let things progress beyond that.

If he’d just ask her out or proposition her, she could issue a flat out “No way,” and they’d both move on. Instead, he hangs around thinking/hoping it will lead to something. Gradually, when nothing happens, he starts to think she’s a bitch who’s toying with him, and she starts to think he’s an annoying twerp who can’t take a hint or, worse yet, a borderline stalker.

In reality, these two “nice” people have themselves to blame for their misery, since neither is honest or forthright about what he/she wants. He acts like he wants to be just friends, but wants a lot more. She acts as if she just wants a nice man. but she wants a lot more.