A close cousin of the neckbeard, the “Nice Guy,” drew mockery on Reddit and Tumblr, further refining the shared stereotype of an inept, unattractive manchild who imagines himself the height of gentlemanly sophistication and wit - a common trope has him tipping his fedora to a woman and saying “M’lady” - but harbors deep-seated misogynist resentment that often erupts in spectacularly un-self-aware fashion. OkCupid, Tinder and other dating services provided staggering evidence of this character, who in flirtatious correspondence will pull a quick 180º upon even the most polite rejection, trading a pretentious air of old-world chivalry for vile and graphic attacks, sometimes continuing to insist that the woman is missing out on a genuinely sensitive, empathetic, and gracious partner. Just as the post-2000 period revealed what strangers on the internet looked like, the 2010s and its explosion of “shareable” content clued us in to those people’s ideologies, warts and all.
