Probably next time just say ‘Hey, nice dress!’ or ‘You look stunning!’ and then just keep walking on.
‘You look nice’, in that context, a fleeting interaction, walking past a group of people you don’t know, who don’t know you, is creepy.
Its like the stereotypical creepy guy thing to say.
Following it up with a lengthy explanation and getting the whole group involved is even worse.
‘Good on you for putting in the effort’ is infantilizing, and implies that they normally don’t.
I agree that throwing a hissy fit and stomping away is an immature, rude overreaction, but you did actually stop and continue the interaction with her friend, thus basically from her perspective being awkward, then insulting, then starting an argument, when her and her friend were presumably… going somewhere, to do something, probably within a specific time frame.
You easily could have just kept walking (which ironically is the actual advice you end with), instead of trying to defend yourself… and you’ve got to be a bit more competent in formulating a succinct, quick compliment when the context is ‘randomly walking past a complete stranger.’
btw, why is “You look stunning!” acceptable, but “You look nice” is not?
Is it because “you look stunning” is euphoric, sales-like, energizing, while “you look nice” is … flat?
why do we have to live in a society that dictates that everything must constantly seem better than it is, instead of just keeping things nice and honest?
Unfortunately, I can’t give you an answer that makes sense, in the way that solving a simple math equation follows well defined rules and just does have a correct solution.
This is a social / psychological kind of question, and if you try to break it down to a mechanistic way of understanding it, well, good luck, a single human brain has almost as many neurons as there are stars in the Milky Way, and they all operate on heuristics and fuzzy logic.
Maybe think of it as … ‘stunning’ is a +5 modifier to ‘You look ___’, whereas ‘nice’ is only +1, and you gotta roll at least a 4.
As to your last question:
You’re not wrong to ask that, but you are overgeneralizing to jump to it straight from ‘why do some compliments often work while others often don’t?’
Part of the point of a compliment is to make someone feel like they are indeed better than most others.
hey i remember you from an earlier discussion that we had :) good to see you again.
yeah, i guess that “and you gotta roll at least a 4” kinda makes sense.
Part of the point of a compliment is to make someone feel like they are indeed better than most others.
I guess that is the point where my personal emotions just differ from the people around me. To me, it is ok to be average, and to be one of many. I don’t want to be special, so i project that feeling onto others. That is why “you look nice” is an acceptable thing to me, but apparently not so much to others.
Not sure if you outright stated you are autistic in other comments, but I’m autistic as well, I’m guessing I just have more experience with it than you, as I’m 35, and I’m guessing you are younger than that.
Socializing with NTs, and even other NDs can be quite difficult and complicated… a whole lot of people will tell you ‘bro, everyone interprets things exactly like I do’… even though their own interpretations are inconsistent, and they are obviously wrong, different people interperet the same phrase, in the same context differently.
The best you can do is trial and error or learn from gathering lots of data, and try to make some general rules that work most of the time.
Anyone who tells you ‘this will work 100% of the time to ensure great social interactions’ is lying… people are different, their moods change, and social norms change over time.
Human psychology is very complicated. It is an academic field that can be studied… but a whole lot of people just hear and see pop psychology tidbits on apps like tiktok, and end up wildly misusing terms.
This has actually been studied, and aomething like 50% of relationship advice and psychological info on tiktok is just flat out wrong, and about 25% of it is dangerously, greivously wrong.
But anyway, its good that you doing some self reflection is leading you to greater understanding of yourself!
Unironically, if you can afford it, a therapist may be able to help you by directing and advising you in that process of becoming more aware of aspects of yourself, and how they differ from others.
I personally agree with you that being average is fine… but again, the point of a compliment is to make someone feel better than average, to highlight something that makes them execptional.
The reason ‘you look nice’ evoked a negative reaponse is that its indicative, to most people, of a compliment that is not really sincere… it isn’t specific, it isn’t emphatic or strong… most people will conclude that a vague, weak compliment is actually just a person who doesn’t really think there’s anything special about a person, but they want to appear as if they think the person is special.
The weak and vague compliment then backfires and evokes the opposite result because it indicates the complimenter is being duplicitous, disingenuous.
Also as a final note, your last msg in this chain used ‘euphoric’ when I think you meant emphatic.
Euphoric, euphoria, is a sense of overwhelming happiness, joy and/or pleasure… its a state of being of a human or conscious subject.
I don’t think a phrase can be euphoric… it can maybe evoke euphoria, but it can’t be euphoric.
Emphatic, on the other hand, basically means strong or severe, more intense or charged with emotion, of a higher degree, unambiguous.
So… nice, good, great, wonderful, stunning, amazing, incredible, impeccable, flawless, iconic… at least for me, that’s roughly in order of rising ‘strength’, as an end to the phrase “You look ___”… but other people may order that list differently.
Probably next time just say ‘Hey, nice dress!’ or ‘You look stunning!’ and then just keep walking on.
‘You look nice’, in that context, a fleeting interaction, walking past a group of people you don’t know, who don’t know you, is creepy.
Its like the stereotypical creepy guy thing to say.
Following it up with a lengthy explanation and getting the whole group involved is even worse.
‘Good on you for putting in the effort’ is infantilizing, and implies that they normally don’t.
I agree that throwing a hissy fit and stomping away is an immature, rude overreaction, but you did actually stop and continue the interaction with her friend, thus basically from her perspective being awkward, then insulting, then starting an argument, when her and her friend were presumably… going somewhere, to do something, probably within a specific time frame.
You easily could have just kept walking (which ironically is the actual advice you end with), instead of trying to defend yourself… and you’ve got to be a bit more competent in formulating a succinct, quick compliment when the context is ‘randomly walking past a complete stranger.’
how about saying none of that shit???
btw, why is “You look stunning!” acceptable, but “You look nice” is not?
Is it because “you look stunning” is euphoric, sales-like, energizing, while “you look nice” is … flat?
why do we have to live in a society that dictates that everything must constantly seem better than it is, instead of just keeping things nice and honest?
Unfortunately, I can’t give you an answer that makes sense, in the way that solving a simple math equation follows well defined rules and just does have a correct solution.
This is a social / psychological kind of question, and if you try to break it down to a mechanistic way of understanding it, well, good luck, a single human brain has almost as many neurons as there are stars in the Milky Way, and they all operate on heuristics and fuzzy logic.
Maybe think of it as … ‘stunning’ is a +5 modifier to ‘You look ___’, whereas ‘nice’ is only +1, and you gotta roll at least a 4.
As to your last question:
You’re not wrong to ask that, but you are overgeneralizing to jump to it straight from ‘why do some compliments often work while others often don’t?’
Part of the point of a compliment is to make someone feel like they are indeed better than most others.
hey i remember you from an earlier discussion that we had :) good to see you again.
yeah, i guess that “and you gotta roll at least a 4” kinda makes sense.
I guess that is the point where my personal emotions just differ from the people around me. To me, it is ok to be average, and to be one of many. I don’t want to be special, so i project that feeling onto others. That is why “you look nice” is an acceptable thing to me, but apparently not so much to others.
Good to see you too =)
Not sure if you outright stated you are autistic in other comments, but I’m autistic as well, I’m guessing I just have more experience with it than you, as I’m 35, and I’m guessing you are younger than that.
Socializing with NTs, and even other NDs can be quite difficult and complicated… a whole lot of people will tell you ‘bro, everyone interprets things exactly like I do’… even though their own interpretations are inconsistent, and they are obviously wrong, different people interperet the same phrase, in the same context differently.
The best you can do is trial and error or learn from gathering lots of data, and try to make some general rules that work most of the time.
Anyone who tells you ‘this will work 100% of the time to ensure great social interactions’ is lying… people are different, their moods change, and social norms change over time.
Human psychology is very complicated. It is an academic field that can be studied… but a whole lot of people just hear and see pop psychology tidbits on apps like tiktok, and end up wildly misusing terms.
This has actually been studied, and aomething like 50% of relationship advice and psychological info on tiktok is just flat out wrong, and about 25% of it is dangerously, greivously wrong.
But anyway, its good that you doing some self reflection is leading you to greater understanding of yourself!
Unironically, if you can afford it, a therapist may be able to help you by directing and advising you in that process of becoming more aware of aspects of yourself, and how they differ from others.
I personally agree with you that being average is fine… but again, the point of a compliment is to make someone feel better than average, to highlight something that makes them execptional.
The reason ‘you look nice’ evoked a negative reaponse is that its indicative, to most people, of a compliment that is not really sincere… it isn’t specific, it isn’t emphatic or strong… most people will conclude that a vague, weak compliment is actually just a person who doesn’t really think there’s anything special about a person, but they want to appear as if they think the person is special.
The weak and vague compliment then backfires and evokes the opposite result because it indicates the complimenter is being duplicitous, disingenuous.
Also as a final note, your last msg in this chain used ‘euphoric’ when I think you meant emphatic.
Euphoric, euphoria, is a sense of overwhelming happiness, joy and/or pleasure… its a state of being of a human or conscious subject.
I don’t think a phrase can be euphoric… it can maybe evoke euphoria, but it can’t be euphoric.
Emphatic, on the other hand, basically means strong or severe, more intense or charged with emotion, of a higher degree, unambiguous.
So… nice, good, great, wonderful, stunning, amazing, incredible, impeccable, flawless, iconic… at least for me, that’s roughly in order of rising ‘strength’, as an end to the phrase “You look ___”… but other people may order that list differently.