On twitter I once replied on a big account's post about men's mental health that if any man wanted a compliment that they could reply and I would compliment them.
Hundreds of replies started coming in from all kinds of different people.
Every single responder I researched their account and tried to find something nice to say about that person.
Can I compliment their physical appearance in a photo? Can I compliment an action they took or something they said on the platform?
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@zeska Thanks for sharing this. I do this periodically with friends, like or comment and I'll tell you something nice. It gets trickier when strangers reply but I still do my best. I imagined you reading their profiles and comments and struggling to find a single thing to say - devastating.
I saw a reddit thread once where men talked about receiving compliments - how it happened so seldom for most that they remembered them years later.
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@Vidyala yeah that's what the original poster was talking about and there were men in her replies saying they couldn't recall receiving a compliment ever, which is what kicked that off
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@zeska That's so sad, and generous of you to offer. It's a lot of work doing it! Part of me read this and went "Oh, you haven't done that in awhile," and then I thought, "Is that really what you should be doing right now?" 😂
The thing with complimenting men IRL though is that I'd absolutely tell a man "Hey, that's a cool shirt," or "I like your hair," except I don't know if that man is safe OR will take it to mean I am hitting on him. We're all snarled in this trap together.
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@Vidyala yes. A gal pal whatsapp group was talking about it yesterday and it's so exhausting because lots of men will only accept that from women and can't or won't lift each other up. It's hard to express that you can't reciprocate if you're confronted with a lot of people who immediately take it as a relationship escalation if you say ANYTHING nice.
It was nice that the context was understood in that moment. I will (try to) give everyone one compliment and our interaction ends there.
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@zeska Yes! That's the only way to do it that feels "safe." I hadn't even considered the "why can't they compliment each other" angle. I'm glad you found a way to do it that was clearly defined and time limited. For the men who were actually impossible to compliment, I hope they've worked on fixing their hearts.
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@Vidyala @GeekAndDad not sure if you saw this thread but it touched on why it's hard for women to compliment men and why it worked this one time I did it.
My whatsapp group was also talking about why men don't compliment men and that's not a problem I can fix on my own. Maybe you can help and accept a challenge to compliment a man this week?
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@zeska @Vidyala Thanks. I did read that thread and it was interesting (and cool) that you found a dynamic that made it work.
It did make me sad that it generally doesn’t work, and that men supposedly don’t compliment other men.
Also sad that this dynamic makes it uncomfortable for me as a man to compliment women since I know they get more of this than they want and have to second guess the motivations of the men. (1/2)
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Because of that dynamic I feel more inhibited about complimenting women than complimenting men.
I’ll have to pay more attention about complimenting other men. Don’t think I do that less than I want to be, but it’s worth examining that assumption. (2/2)
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