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Meh I hate such compliments. A compliment like this is not one.

It's empty. It's just a "look i'm cool and nice I say something nice just to say something nice"

I dislike when I hear those. On mean days, I'd often go "oh, thanks! so what's so good about my shoes compared to yours?"

And the person has no clue. They usually don't even come up with a lie, like "I like the shade/tint" or "the logos are awesome" or what not.

Because, again, it was empty and had no meaning. Generally, they did not like the shoes. They just "wanted to be nice". Happened that the shoes/umbrella/whatever weren't 100% usual, but they did not find anything they liked. Oh so wrong.



Did you read the second half of the article? It's about how the author overcame his urge to blurt out the first compliment he could think of. He learned to dig deeper and find something about the person that's truly commendable.


Which proves the point. Trying hard to find compliments is at best not genuine (and eventually it can be "cute"), at worst manipulative.

In most cases it's also easy to point out. People smart enough to do that properly are rare. (and usually manipulative :)




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