• gandalf_der_12te
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    10 hours ago

    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?

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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      9 hours ago

      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.

      • gandalf_der_12te
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        8 hours ago

        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.

        • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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          7 minutes ago

          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.