The Cult of Niceness is a recent phenomenon mentioned in a write-up by
Bruce Frohnen about how some
people prioritize "niceness" over doing what is right, masking a very deceptive act of discrimination that pretends to care about everyone equally while in fact favoring certain
people who are unethical to help them get away with murder over others who are ethical and deserving of good treatment.
The phenomenon does not take into account that if you are "nice" to the wrong person (e.g. a thief, a corrupt officer, or a bad manager) or at the wrong
time (like after someone caused harm to others or damaged
people's properties), you are actually not being nice to the good
people who would negatively get impacted by being nice to a bad person at the wrong
time. In other words, the "niceness" that the Cult of Niceness promotes is not even real niceness at all. It is only a corrupt shallow naive version of niceness that is not good at all and is only meant to excuse the evil actions of evil
people.
Usually, there are benefactors indirectly benefiting from the Cult of Niceness, whether financially when
people are not reprimanded for falling for certain addictions (e.g.
porn) or immorally when normalizing and excusing certain immoral behaviors.
Members of the Cult of Niceness hypocritically do what they decry by yelling rudely and angrily at the person they perceive as "not nice" without being nice themselves, negating their credibility and becoming easily ignorable by everyone.
In the 2010s, the Cult of Niceness became
popular in online social media networks as mobs of unethical
people would harass certain ethical
people they deemed weak, unconnected-to-high-level-
people, and worthy of being hated (while hypocritically claiming they were against hate). And, if the harassed
people tried to defend themselves against the rude comments of the unethical
people, they'd get suddenly called out for not being "nice" while the unethical rude harassers are let off the hook as "simply expressing themselves" and "not being hateful" despite their obvious hating on the ethical
people they harassed.
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A home owner got robbed through breaking and entering, and when they found the thief leaving with their belongings, they yelled at the thief to drop everything they took, but then immediately, the Cult of Niceness
police cut the home owner off and asked them to be "nice" by not yelling at the thief rudely, thus allowing the thief to escape.
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Someone on a mountain was running towards a cliff that they were not aware of, so another person loudly yelled at the runner to warn them they were going to fall off a cliff, but members of the Cult of Niceness immediately
cut that person off before they finished their warning to inform them they were not being "nice" to the runner due to yelling rudely, which prevented the runner from hearing the warning that was about to save their life, and ended up falling off the cliff, benefiting benefactors of the Cult of Niceness.