There are people for whom being nice is a transaction: I'll be nice to you because I can't handle the frightening ambiguity of human relations (we never know what the other truly thinks), the possibility of irreciprocity and rejection, the likelihood of not getting the kind of reflection of yourself projected back to you that you'd like to get. So I need to control the environment by being really ****ing nice preemptively.
People who are preemptively rude to everyone are doing something similar btw. I've had plenty of students whose default behavior was some kind of belligerence and it too stems from deep seated insecurity.
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