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What's this with nice in USA?

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    #26
    But why then do they always use it in movies and when someone says nice the other person reacts as if they were talking about a leper?

    It's more as if was bad, but lacking of evil.

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      #27
      PPV, take a look at GY's link on Nice Guy Syndrome

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        #28
        It's the personal equivalent of "fine".

        Edit: not in the "foine" sense, obviously.

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          #29
          Originally posted by Pietro Paolo Virdis View Post
          Really!?
          If I was your brother and brought home a girlfriend for dinner and your mother said "she seems nice", you'd interpret that as your mom saying she's a bitch? I'd see that as potential them getting along very well.
          While I would totally get if I was your brother and brought home a friend to try hitch you up and you said "he seems nice", I'd interpret that as you're not interested at all, not a chance.

          Now, please do remember, all of the above is my interpretations of how it works in american movies.
          Yeah, unless said with a sarcastic tone or in a context where damning with faint praise is understood to be pretty damning, "she seems nice" doesn't necessarily mean "she's a b*tch." It usually means "I know almost nothing about her but I'm cautiously optimistic that she's a pleasant enough person to deal with." Though, in that case, I'd be more likely to say "she seems cool" or "she seems ok," because, as we've discussed "nice" has taken on a lot of baggage.
          Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 10-07-2018, 16:49.

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            #30
            This may be a regional thing, but that phrase is virtually never used non-sarcastically around here.

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              #31
              Even when getting nice up on the microphone?

              He seems...nice would surely always be worse than he seems nice.

              And someone saying, 'she's nice, her, like' would indicate the speaker sound 'her' quite sexually attractive in this locale.

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                #32
                Here's just one example from movies.

                1:32 in and what the mother says



                The other, the negative nice in my initial questions, it's always about guys.

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                  #33
                  Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                  PPV, take a look at GY's link on Nice Guy Syndrome
                  Yeah, read that and was interesting. As was "See also: Bad boy (archetype)", further down.

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                    #34
                    Originally posted by Pietro Paolo Virdis View Post
                    Really!?
                    If I was your brother and brought home a girlfriend for dinner and your mother said "she seems nice", you'd interpret that as your mom saying she's a bitch? I'd see that as potential them getting along very well.
                    While I would totally get if I was your brother and brought home a friend to try hitch you up and you said "he seems nice", I'd interpret that as you're not interested at all, not a chance.

                    Now, please do remember, all of the above is my interpretations of how it works in american movies.
                    Context is everything. If someone is behaving nicely and someone says that she seems nice, they probably mean it at face value. However, if someone is acting like a bitch, and someone says it, they're probably being sarcastic. As Ursus said, around here, it's hardly ever used non-sarcastically.

                    And WOM is wrong about needing to italicize 'she' to get the message across. Example, if someone posts a tweet by Sarah Huckabee Sanders in which she is saying that she eats babies for breakfast, if I responded to that by tweeting "she seems nice" with no emphasis, the people I want to get it will get it. The rest of them can fuck off.

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                      #35
                      This thread reminds me of a moment that really tickled me in my teens. I was round at a schoolfriend's house talking to him and his Mum, a lovely lady but very old-style Irish Catholic church-golng. We briefly mentioned plans to attend the disco run by one of the north Leeds Catholic parishes for the local Catholic teenagers. His Mum said "I hope you meet some nice girls". Patrick, in a moment of inspired mischief, replied "Mum, we're not interested in *nice* girls!". (In fact, hitting it off with girls of pretty much any description would have been a win at that time in our lives.)

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                        #36
                        Nice to see you, to see you nice.

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