Damn-Dutch

SIRE wants the Dutch to be nice to people, or people to be nice to the Dutch or something to that extent.

First off you might be thinking WTF is SIRE. And if you’re not Dutch you would be thinking that. SIRE is basically a non-profit organisation aimed at changing society for the better through advertising. Their most well known advertising campaign runs around december/january about not being an idiot when it comes to fireworks. In short they tell you what you should already know.

And they’ve now taken it upon themselves to teach us how to deal with nice people. Clearly I’m an extraordinary person for not thinking that people should be nicer. According to sire.nl 78% of Dutch think people should be nicer. What they mean of course is act nicer, not be nicer. You can act nice and not actually be nice, hence the word act. Anyway, to me this is up to the individual and that is where it should remain. You can be nice if you want but surely it isn’t a bloody crime to be in a bad mood for a change or to just ignore someone. If you don’t want to deal with people you let them know. Not engaging in their niceness seems the right thing to do. SIRE also claims people find niceness suspicious, and I honestly don’t blame them. When you want a favour, you are nice. This again makes perfect sense but apparently being a little suspicious about niceness doesn’t.

Well thank you SIRE but I’d like to decline with a nod and a nice little smile. I’ll decide when and when not to be nice thank you very much.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 15:49 and is filed under Damn Dutch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.