This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice.
23. A little bit of niceness
It’s nearly a year since the Niceties Token campaign began, so I wanted to talk a little bit about it.
A Niceties Token is a small Fimo clay object with ‘niceties-token.com’ written on one side and a name on the other. There are now about 1,500 of these tokens and they all have unique names on them. They are all registered on the website and have their own logbooks. A Niceties Token is given to someone, who logs it, writes a little bit about themselves and then passes it on – to anyone they want to, who will then go off and do the same thing.
The idea was that by giving a token you are being nice, it’s a similar act to smiling. And when you smile at someone it cheers them up slightly. Perhaps slightly enough to smile at someone else and pass on that good feeling – ahhhh…
The reason for all this is the Team Nice theory that we are generally pretty nice. Yeah there are bad people that do horrific things but they are not that common at all. Most people that we know are not evil or even rude. In fact, just because someone does something that causes offence doesn’t actually mean that they meant it.
Someone doesn’t move down the tube carriage, not because they are a wanker, but because they didn’t hear the request. The pregnant woman is left standing on the train, not because every person that already has a seat is so purely demonic that they smugly stare at her and conspiratorially cackle at each other. Most of the time they haven’t seen her, aren’t sure if she is pregnant, or can’t get her attention (some pregnant women, as mentioned last week, avoid eye contact on public transport as they feel it is too confrontational).
Niceties Tokens are meant to act as little reminders that the vast majority of people that we encounter are not mass murderers.
The third batch of tokens will be given out at the Niceties Token Party on 17th November, details of which you can find here.
This week's niceness
I have got to make more tokens for the party, they are all baked, hand painted and then varnished.
By Liz Akers
