Ich habe Sie

Mason: If people think that you don't like them, they want it even more, it's pathetic really, isn't it? ... Okay so that was today's lesson from Der Waffle Haus, withhold the love and you gain the power.
--Dead Like Me, "The Shallow End"

Mason might be a fuck-up, but he’s right. I’m generally a nice person. I’m polite and helpful and try to keep my evil glare under wraps. I avoid confrontation; hell, sometimes the angrier I am, the nicer I’ll be (particularly with my boss, who’s a worse fuck-up than Mason but who I can’t afford not to be nice to). And in my niceness, people are nice back, but I rarely have them chasing after my attention.

Not until I stop being nice.

The couple I mentioned who are friends with my friends, the ones who are smug and pretentious and live in squalor—the ones I want nothing to do with—seem to really like me. Okay, I’m not particularly rude to them. I’ll talk to them if there’s a common point of interest. But I have been known to snap at stupid statements he’s made. I’m not enthusiastic about anything they do or say. I roll my eyes at his idiot jokes or their hippie idealism. And yet they keep inviting me to things. Groups they form, events they host, gatherings at their filthy apartment. I keep saying no and they just invite me all the more.

It’s not the first time, either. I met a good friend of mine back in university when she sat next to me in class, and I think she would agree that I didn’t project the friendliest aura when she chose to sit next to me rather than the empty seat farther away (and I’m amazed she wanted to get to know me after that). Another friend admitted that I initially scared him (that damn evil glare again). A third someone seemed happier to be around me the meaner I was (the meanness in that case stemmed from some serious frustration with him; he, on the other hand, has his own issues).

So, withhold the love and gain the power? Pass the dictatorship, hold the benevolence.