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Comment by monster_group | Hacker News Reader

I was amazed when I repeatedly saw how an incredibly shameless guy in my college days not only got what he wanted but was also liked. He would say the most shameless things that would embarrass people while in their presence. For example - he would announce in the whole class who hadn't taken a shower in a week or who wasn't wearing underwear today (he would sometimes have this kind of information because we all used to live in the dorm.) Yet all the girls used to like him. Once I asked a girl why she liked him knowing that he says embarrassing and shameless things and makes jokes at people's expense. Her response was "what he says makes me laugh."

P.S - I had nothing against the guy personally. He rarely made jokes at my expense - he didn't have enough jokeworthy material on me.

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Pushing limits and demonstrating that you can get away with things is a way to signal social standing. It's like poker. If you seem confident, people will infer you are so secure because you have lots of resources and can afford not to care. And this becomes self fulfilling and after some time you will really have social capital and allies and can afford to be even more upfront given that protection.

I think the key thing is to live and breathe the rhythm of social situations. When are high tides and when the lows. You mentioned humor. That's also very much connected to this. It matter when and how you say your upfront things. We all know the stereotype of the matter of fact but socially out of touch blunt weirdo who blurts out his opinions at wrong times with the wrong tone. You have to keep your finger on the pulse of the community.

In a sense it requires great knowledge of the general sentiment to be able to ignore that sentiment.

If you want high status you want people to say of you: "He's not afraid to show who he is, he stands up for what he believes, he is no-nonsense. Maybe he says controversial things but his heart is in the right place."

I found value in learning about my "Mr. Nice Guy" behaviors and doing self-work to overcome them, to the extent I can do so. My nice-guy tendencies did great damage to my life. Yet at 61 years of age, many things are wired in so deeply that I'll probably never be able to undo them.

I think what you may have seen is a man that wasn't a jerk, but also communicated a (reasonable) lack of concern for how he was viewed by others.

"Mr. Nice Guys" are deeply concerned about how they will be seen by others, so there's a lot of self-censoring and manipulation that goes on for them. They also sort-of look to others to figure out what values they should hold and espouse ("Who they should be") rather than trying to determine their values based on what they most deeply believe to be right.

Dr. Robert Glover (psychologist) is the go-to guy for anyone interested in more on this.

Embarrassing someone is a form of showing closeness, ingroupness depending on how it's done. You can call your brother a dork and he know you still love him where as if someone on the outside calls him a dork you might get angry. People like the one you mention (in my imagination since I'm imaging a particular type of person based on your description) have a kind of charisma/charm/skill that let's them embarrass people and basically communicate "I like you and we're close and me embarrassing you is proof"

Identifying things that other people might feel shame about does not feel like the same definition of shameless as the one in the article.

It's related - I feel shame when I say something that embarrasses another person. Maybe this guy doesn't realize that he's embarrassing people, or maybe he doesn't care as long as there is no immediate unpleasant consequence for him.

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