Why do men value themselves when threads such as this exist to confirm they're foolish and arrogant to do so?

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Thanks for the A2A. I spent a lot of time dealing with this years ago in my mid-twenties.

Am I attractive enough, am I not attractive enough? In the end the question doesn’t make any sense. You’re going to be attractive to somebody. The people you are attracted to deal with the same doubts. If I had a choice between being depressed and being over-confident, I’d take over-confidence Every. Single. Time.

Confidence is an attractive trait all in itself. A few years ago we had this guy coming into the coffee shop. He walked on crutches and wasn’t terribly socially aware. He would, as a part of his ‘ritual’, approach every person in the coffee shop and greet them, especially ladies. He’d try to be cool in ways that just came across as sad.

People did their best to accommodate him and not be rude to him. They would smile at him and humor him. And the interesting thing I noticed was that he said all the time, that he was just trying to brighten people’s day. And he did. The girls he approached would smile a little. He would act goofy and it would make people laugh.

It took a special kind of patience to deal with him on a regular basis, and so the coffee shop regulars would do their best to ignore him. He eventually moved back to his native Texas and left us in peace. But to this day, two of the regulars bring him up every few weeks or so. We joke that he’s going to show up one day and start driving everybody nuts again. I asked one of them, “you really miss him, don’t you?” He nodded and said, “yeah, I kinda do.”

Here was a guy with no social skills, can’t even get around on his own feet without tools, he had way more reason to be depressed than any of the depressed people I saw. But he wasn’t, and instead was able to not be completely miserable.

I’d rather be foolish and arrogant than miserable and depressed.