How to Be Less Rude
A formula for more social agency
Are we more rude these days? On the surface, the answer is yes.
Yes, we’re more rude
Online spaces grant too much anonymity and too little accountability. After a truly hostile election season, political polarization has frayed social trust. We’re left feeling like everyone on the other side is either a crank or an extremist.
The attention economy is also to blame, right? Your devices divorce you from your physical body, trapping you in distraction and ambivalence.
Dan Dixon, writing for Aeon, explains that our immersion in screens disrupts the “social function of embodied experience.” When you’re present—your head up, ears open, eyes exploring—you participate in “an expressive, ambiguous space of ‘intercorporeality’” with the those around you. But as screens absorb more focus, your attention is siphoned by notifications. Instead of perceiving the humanity around you, Dixon argues, you live more in a digital world stripped of traditional empathic social cues.
Does this explains why, when you bump into someone, you don’t say “excuse me”? Even if you do, the other person likely has headphones on, and doesn't acknowledge your apology anyway. Plus, you have other things to worry about. All the clerks want a 25% tip. All the customers are shoplifting. All the scammers want your identity. It seems your boundaries are under attack from all directions. What choice do you have? You have to put your walls up.
If we’re consumed with protecting our attention, identity, and time at all costs—no wonder we’re rude and on edge.
No, we’re less rude
On the other hand, there's a compelling counternarrative. In the past ten years, I’ve witnessed remarkable cultural shifts toward greater empathy and inclusion. Conversations about mental health, emotional intelligence, and personal boundaries have become mainstream. The very platforms that seem to foster rudeness have also democratized discussions about consent and gender expression, and exposed major bad actors.
Economically and socially, we’re swinging back from the pandemic—and fast. GDP is up, unemployment is dropping1, wage growth is accelerating, and inflation is falling2. In response to lockdown isolation, millennials and Gen Z are fed up with dating apps and remote work; they’re seeking in-person meetups (see: run clubs) and office jobs3.
Concerns about a so-called “friendship recession” may also be overblown. Claude Fischer, in an article for Asterisk, argues that the “loneliness pandemic” reflects a shift toward higher relationship standards, not a collapse in social bonds. While loneliness spiked during COVID, Fischer reports, by 2023 isolation rates have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels.
So, are we becoming more empathetic and connected, or more rude and isolated? The answer isn’t simple—it’s both. As a culture, we’re developing radical empathy and inclusion on one end, and defensive individualism on the other. This is super disorienting, and it's making our social behavior increasingly incoherent.
How to fix this? Well, you could just be more nice, right?
Nice is not the antidote to rude
Being less rude doesn’t necessarily mean being more nice. In practice, “niceness” often means softening all edges, over-accommodating. There’s a critical distinction between being nice (self-sacrificing and people pleasing) and being socially agentic (kind yet assertive).
I wrote an essay in season one about how my people pleasing tendencies led me into a deeply codependent relationship. In trying to avoid conflict with my (jealous, controlling, shithead) boyfriend, I became increasingly dishonest and manipulative. People pleasing can be just as harmful as rudeness—it erodes trust and ultimately ruins relationships.
For the essay, I created the spectrum (above) that maps people pleasing from high care to low care. It’s totally imprecise, but it illustrates how caretaking became destructive as it pushed me to ignore my own needs and tell even crazier lies to maintain the peace.
So how can you be less rude, without being too nice? To preserve this balance, I’ve determined you need two essential traits: assertiveness and warmth. Assertiveness allows you to communicate your needs clearly and hold firm boundaries. The antidote to people pleasing. Warmth fosters connection and likeability. The antidote to rudeness. When you have both in healthy proportions, the result is social agency. You’re able to move around our complex landscape of in-person and digital worlds, making friends and building connections, without feeling under attack or disembodied.
The social agency matrix
I created this 2x2 model to help conceptualize social agency as it relates to rudeness. The x axis is warmth, and the y axis is assertiveness, giving us four quadrants:
Rude (low warmth, high assertiveness)
Rigidly defends boundaries without regard for others.
“I don’t have time for this right now.” “That’s not my problem.”
Kind (high warmth, high assertiveness)
Communicates needs confidently while showing care and respect.
“I can’t lend you my truck for the move, but I’d love to help you pack some boxes. I’m free all day Sunday.”
Avoidant (low warmth, low assertiveness)
Withdraws to avoid confrontation or connection.
Avoids expressing opinions; submits to the will of the larger group.
Pleaser (high warmth, low assertiveness)
Suppresses needs, overly accommodating.
Always says “yes” to avoid conflict. Flakes when overwhelmed; often resentful.
Social agency—the combination of warmth and assertiveness—allows you to show care without losing yourself, to embody kindness without bending to everyone else’s demands. The extremes of people pleasing and rudeness fail because they lack this balance: one sacrifices the self for others, while the other sacrifices others for the self.
Next time you feel an impulse toward rudeness—the urge to snap in a tense moment or the temptation to ghost a conflict altogether—ask yourself: Am I communicating my boundaries clearly? Am I showing respect and care? How can I act with more assertiveness and warmth?
Being less rude isn’t just about being nice. It’s about showing up fully, with more kindness and clarity.
Sources and further reading:
“Labor market rebounded much faster than projected,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
“Average real wages rise for 12 straight months as prices decelerate faster than nominal wage growth,” Economy Policy Institute
“Only 11 percent of Gen Z would prefer to be fully remote, compared with 34 percent of non-Gen Z,” Seramount
How to be More Agentic by Cate Hall
Liberalism and public order by Matt Yglesias
The Myth of the Loneliness Epidemic by Claude S. Fischer
The body as mediator by Dan Nixon
You’re reading Season 3 of The Ick. The social rulebook has been rewritten in our post-pandemic world—and it's left us wondering, “Am I doing this right?” Season 3 of The Ick is creating a modern field guide to social etiquette and decoding the hidden architecture of human connection. Find season 1: embarrassing stories here, and season 2: the five senses here.
Interesting. I genuinely didn't see the difference between pleaser and kind before; thank you!
Gearing up for the 2x2 hat trick