Have you ever had the entertaining pleasure of seeing how poisonously "nice" women can be to one another whenever they interact with their potential competition?

If one were to observe said ritual with the eyes of a seasoned socially acute veteran — it borders on caricature of seething, fake pleasantries of Edmund Blackadder. Conversely, when received at face value by the naive gaze of a socially inept basement dweller, misguided by the surface content of the interaction — it will appear thus:

Independent Girl: I simply lo-ove your shoes! They are so-o adorable! Strong woman: Why thank you so-o much!

Strong Woman will later whisper to her allies soon after the exchange: "OMG she hates me!"

This is why guys whose strategy is to posture nice and appease can never work out. The nice vice is a tool of the disempowered feminine, where niceness = passive aggression through insecurity = weakness.

A man must either be the frame-strong go-fuck-yourself jerk with no trace of strategic niceness — an attitude at a safe range never to trigger the subsonic bitch detection radar. Or has to become a superior Machiavellian actor with finesse Casanovan suaveness — so superior to woman's own sneaky strategy that she doesn't quite know whether she wants to fuck you or be you. Anything short of the extremes of this dichotomy will simply not do, setting off suspicion alarms in a woman's intricate psychological ecosystem.

Afterthought: Gay men are often included in this grotesque sparring match. Women are threatened by them as much, if not more than other women.