9 ms·

This is why you shouldn't be afraid to give out (truthful) compliments folks. For a small communication effort, you may make a big enough impact for your compli

• edgarvaldes 8y ago
  After a presentation about the software we built the last year for internal consumption (something we do twice a year -the talk, I mean), this high-rank guy come to my office and told me I was a really good presentator and that "We are wasting your talents, you must give more talks or training". I did not expect that. I felt very grateful for his words.
• DoreenMichele 8y ago
  This is why you shouldn't be afraid to give out (truthful) compliments folks I've been seriously and repeatedly burned for doing that. I then spent years dialing it back. I'm 53 and only just now working on figuring out how to do that again without letting it turn into some shit show where everyone treats me like I'm their bitch. Every single guy I have ever gushed at about how keen he is has, without fail, promptly turned into a psycho asshole monster and made me wish I never met him. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong. But my feeling is there are reasons most people don't gush at you until your last day in their life as you leave: Because so many people promptly act like monkeys do if humans make the mistake of feeding them and just make your life a living hell over the crime of trying to be nice.
  • jacobolus 8y ago
    > Every single guy I have ever gushed at about how keen he is has, without fail, promptly turned into a psycho asshole monster and made me wish I never met him. I have seen / heard of many guys getting complimented over the years (including myself a few times), and never heard of one of them turning into a “psycho”, “asshole”, or ”monster”. A couple times I saw a guy get complimented out of the blue and then kind of stammer something and hurry away looking embarrassed, because he didn’t have any idea how to respond. A couple times I have seen men brush off / refuse compliments it looked like because they wanted to seem modest (e.g. “oh it was really no big deal, please don’t think anything of it...” after someone had just directly said their action was very helpful/meaningful). Once I saw a guy get complimented and respond “yeah, everyone says the same thing”, which I admit is a pretty obnoxious response. I have also heard plenty of stories of guys who were monsters (physical abusers, stalkers, spreaders of nasty rumors ...), but to my knowledge none of those came out of a compliment. I believe you, but I’m having trouble imagining quite what happened. Maybe you can elaborate a bit? Do you mean that those men turned around and demanded something more from you? Stopped treating you with basic respect? Wouldn’t talk to you anymore? Chased you around? ...
    • DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I don't want to get into a lot of details, but I will give one example. I had an affair in my twenties with a man whose life could have been absolutely ruined because of it. He wasn't especially good looking, but he had beautiful blue eyes and I had a thing for blue eyes and told him how much I liked his blue eyes. We were not sleeping together at the time and it wasn't an unreasonable thing to say, given circumstances. This was a huge turning point in the relationship and he ended up nutcase levels of obsessed with me. This man is the reason I did not use my first and last name online for many years -- because it is a fairly unique combination and I didn't want to be easily and readily found by him. Five years after I ditched him, he hired a fucking detective to track me down and called my house where I answered the goddamned phone in front of my children, like that isn't awkward as all hell. No, he hadn't filed for divorce from his alcoholic wife. No, he hadn't left his incredibly conservative career. No, he absolutely was not in any position whatsoever to say "Oops, sorry. You can move in with me." if his phone call outed me to my husband and resulted in a divorce. I'm not exaggerating when I say psycho asshole monster. It's only not been more of a debacle because avoiding drama is one of my skills, thankfully.
      • jacobolus 8y ago
        Sorry you had to go through such a shitty aftermath. That sounds terrifying. It sounds like he took the compliment as a sign that you were really serious about him and the relationship, whereas you intended it just as a statement about his eyes. The “nutcase levels of obsessed” part sounds like a pre-existing problem / part of this guy’s temperament, rather than a normal response to receiving compliments. The people I know who attracted stalkers didn’t so far as I know trigger them with any particular action. Dunno, I’m not a psychologist. I would be interested to hear more about this kind of compliment-as-behavior-switch in other kinds of circumstances.
        • DoreenMichele 8y ago
          I think a key detail is he wasn't especially good looking and I complimented him on a physical trait. I've known lots of people over the years who had baggage over X and who made X into some big damn deal where it was impossible to say you liked them without it going weird places. Short men do this a lot and make it impossible to say "Eh, your height doesn't bother me, but I like X about you." Men who see themselves as ugly do this. Men who are heavyset and hung up about it. Etc ad nauseum. At some point, my personal policy became "Sorry you have so much baggage. I'm not your goddamned therapist. I wouldn't touch you with a ten foot pole, not because you are short, but because, Oh. My. God. BTDT, got the t-shirt and life is too short for this shit, geez." People paint themselves into a corner and make it impossible for other people to make X trait into a non issue. And then it becomes this hill to die on and god help you if you stupidly are oblivious and genuinely didn't think they were too short, too ugly or whatever.
  • ianai 8y ago
    People also readily undervalue things that come to them easily - relationships, friendships, money, power, etc. I work at a multi billion dollar facility that is routinely taken for granted by workers. “Oh it’s just this place” sort of thing. I’ve known men and women to undervalue relationships that came to them easily. That exact concept was on display in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. I think the “struggle” really does make people value things and others more highly and the lack thereof less. My working hypothesis is our brains are always learning - literally everything. We learn our concept of time from our experience with it. We learn our concept of a relationship with another person from our experience with them. If someone comes into our life easily - relative to other relationships - our brain associates them with less value. It’s also horrible logic. Edit- as for whether someone likes you: people accept, overlook, and tolerate more aberrations from normal/good treatment from people they value or like. If they’ll accept little of your aberrations then they’re unlikely to ever like you - run for the hills. That’s one of my tricks for likeness.
    • DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I think there are a lot of factors. A few that readily come to mind: Pecking order nonsense. People who are big believers in pecking order see you as "beneath" them if you compliment them. They then feel owed and like you are permanently required to kowtow to them and aren't allowed to quit. Prosody and tone matching. My son probably is incapable of these two things. He gets very negative social reactions from people all the time. Tone matching signals pecking order at a subconscious level. People aren't consciously aware of it. I apparently tone match by default, which gets me read as deferential and servile. It works quite well when dealing with, for example, wait staff who routinely get mistreated. I get excellent service anywhere that I am a regular. But people who do not perceive themselves as "below" me conclude I'm a doormat and they can wipe their boots on me. Value signaling. People get this idea that they are irreplaceable and I am being so nice because they are so incredibly amazingly rare and wonderful. I have found it works vastly better for me to be kind of indifferent and make sure they realize "there can be another you in a minute." Which annoys the fool out of me.
      • sooheon 8y ago
  • crispinb 8y ago
    > Maybe I'm just doing it wrong. No, you're just falling foul of a dynamic that preexists you. Women giving men compliments is, for the most part, interpreted as a come-on. It's not fair, and it hinders the frank communication between men and women that makes really healthy social environments such a joy to operate in, but it's the case more often than not.
    • compcoffee 8y ago
      >Women giving men compliments is, for the most part, interpreted as a come-on. It's not fair Umm..I'm pretty sure men complementing women have it a lot worse.
      • crispinb 8y ago
        Not in my experience. If a woman does interpret a compliment as an approach, they are very unlikely to act as if that gives them carte blanche to behave proprietorially towards the complimenting party from that point on. It's hard to imagine the experience @DoreenMichelle reports happening to a man. Some 'compliments' are of course thinly-disguised acts of creepiness. Different category altogether, and dead easy to spot for people within a normal range of emotional intelligence. I compliment people (men & women alike) quite frequently. Usually on their work, sometimes on their behaviour in other respects, less commonly on appearance. When directed towards a woman, not once has this been interpreted (AFAIK) as a come-on or unwarranted approach. By and large people can tell when you're being friendly with a light touch, and without an agenda.
        • ryanwaggoner 8y ago
          I am so confused...it sounds to me from the story not that she complimented someone who then starting acting like a psycho. It sounds like she complimented someone, things grew from there, they had an actual physical affair, and then he started acting like a psycho. Why is the compliment even remotely relevant to this chain of events? Do we imagine that if he made the first move he wouldn’t have turned out to be a psycho later? Or that psychos never make the first move? Maybe I just misread the story.
  • madaxe_again 8y ago
    The reason you may be experiencing this effect is that some people, such as me, absolutely loathe being praised or complimented - it’s incredibly uncomfortable, for a number of reasons: 1) What Do You Want? More often than not, people have an ulterior motive when giving a compliment. You’re telling me you like my shirt, or that what I did last week was kind, and I’m wondering what sort of onerous task or bequest you’re about to request of me. It’s usually a “loan” (donation) that folks are after, and if not it’s “can you come and fix my technology” or “can you build me a website” or “my drains are blocked and I have a fear of plumbers”. 2) The Punchline. A compliment is often a prelude to a criticism, following the classic shit-sandwich school of management. “You’re the most intelligent person I’ve ever met .... and I’m going to have to ask you to leave the company” “I like your shirt ... but you need to do something about your face”. If someone close to me starts complimenting me I just tune out until the criticism bit, as the compliments are just so much hot air, and I’d sooner not hear happy falsehoods. 3) Platitudes. Most folks don’t mean the compliments they say - they just fill the air with noise because they find silence uncomfortable. You happened to be nearby, and they won’t remember that they complimented you yesterday, and will let you overhear them giving the same compliment to 20 other people. So, in short, people issue compliments because they a) want something, b) want to criticise you without them feeling bad about it or c) because it’s habit and they don’t mean it. So - complimenting people is a poor strategy for life - it just makes people guarded, and ultimately avoid you because you’re giving so many compliments you must want them to do something really unpleasant. It’s a shame that this is how it is, but it is.
    • DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I don't know why you are framing this like you disagree with me since we are both saying "Yeah, that giving compliments thing? Doesn't really work so well in my experience."
      • 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
        It depends on the sincerity of the person giving the compliment. It’s hard to gauge or measure that sometimes. I try to be charitable, but I am also disposed to paranoid thought loops so I’m a bit more charitable than most people to compensate for that mental defect.
  • csomar 8y ago
    You are in the wrong circle or culture. So act accordingly. But it is different in other circles/places of the world.
  • funkaster 8y ago
    That's a very good point. And prob the main reason why so many people hold those thoughts: the implications are very much unkown and the risk is very high. Generally, people don't like to take risks. I don't think you're doing it wrong, maybe just a bit unlucky but I can see for sure that happening.
• relyio 8y ago
  >This is why you shouldn't be afraid to give out (truthful) compliments folks. That's what I try to do. Sometimes people take it as insincere flattery because I guess they think it is sarcasm at first. But I do mean it, every time!
• m3kw9 8y ago
  If you tell someone how you feel and goes awry, some people cannot handle it. This is prime reason people don’t tell their feelings.