Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…let’s see, I can’t remember exactly how it goes…but it’s something to the effect of “if you’re a nice guy, you don’t finish first. Or even close. More like…last.” Yeah, I think that’s pretty much it. Nailed it.

Truer words maybe have never been spoken. Don’t worry, nice girls: the same applies to you. This acute sort of perpetual misery is all inclusive. Don’t get me wrong; kindness sucking at racing doesn’t apply to every situation. If you suck as a person, it’s hard to be a good friend. Tools and douchebags need not apply for the Nice Olympics. But I tell you what, in my not-as-brief-as-I-would-like-anymore existence on this earth, one of the things that has rang true is there is no better way to woo the opposite sex than to be in a-hole city, population: you.

Why is that? Not sure, really. It’s not like nice is the easy road. You have to go out of your way to do things (which you don’t care about, because chances are if you’re nice, you do it because you want to), like coffee runs at night when the person needs a dose of caffeine, stat. Or being thoughtful. Or being supportive. If you’re a douche, it’s easy; just do none of those things, throw temper tantrums, and be insulting.

And yet that’s what appeals to people, apparently. “Well, that’s too black and white,” you say. “You can’t generalize everyone,” you chime in, frothing at the bit to prove my age old cliché is false.

Sure. Of course this rule doesn’t apply to every person. That’s just silly. But when you’re talking about something that’s a consensus, it’s okay to talk broadly. When people say Sucker Punch was a god-awful film, they are speaking about the consensus, and not taking into account the 5 percent of people (myself included) who didn’t hate it. The same theory applies here. It’s not always true, but when I’ve experienced it personally more times than I care to admit here, I think the idea is a pretty safe bet.

And let me assure you, I’m not extracting data from an abstract source. “Nice guys finish last because I bought her a rose and she didn’t want to bear all my children!” Nope. Rather, my situations were about as quantitative as you can get when referring to the intangibles of human emotion. I’ll walk you through it:

Subject A — in this case, the girl — is faced with two choices: subject B, someone who treats her well, and subject C, someone who is awful. Take my word as testament for this guy’s high level of atrocity — if you were a father and your daughter was dating this guy, you would go to sleep at night looking at old family photos of your little girl and wondering what you or she did so wrong to be connected with a guy like that. In every situation — every damn one — I’ll let you guess which choice was made. Hint: one of them leads to happy thoughts. Another leads to this blog.

The heart wants what it wants and all that garbage. I get it. Whatever. See, here is where I would get to my point, but I don’t really have one. I just wanted to share an observation. For anyone who has shared a similar experience and is as jaded as I am, I guess the only thing I have to say is keep on doing what you’re doing. Eventually, someone, somewhere, will appreciate it and find it endearing. After all, that’s what we have to believe…right?