Context: I am currently actively suppressing the urge to say someone is pretty.
Moderation is key. Flirting and complements are fine, especially if rejections are gracefully accepted. Full on :reddit-logo: "TIFU by having sexy sex" :brainworms: are cringe, and it's telling how many of them tell on themselves by complaining about how they can't stare at kids in a public playground or stare at someone at the gym or something.
They say it themselves. It's a fairly common "cancel culture gone too far" personal testimony on :reddit-logo: and it almost always involves them professing how totally not creepy they are while "merely examining nubile specimens of female humans in their optimal reproductive prime" or something like that. :agony-4horsemen:
It's not an easily quantifiable boundary, so they hate that because they can't rules lawyer and metagame that boundary.
It's cool and good to be complimentary to people you're on friendly terms with. Practice bigging up your friends and colleagues. It is not automatically thirst to tell someone they look pretty as long as you have the social adroitness to avoid :awooga:. Strangers are a whole other deal, and you should overall leave them alone.
Also, shit, some people like to flirt.
My theory is that Anglos, Americans especially, are still (on average) more puritanical about things like nudity and sexuality than even other European Westerners.
Since English speaking online spaces are dominated by Anglos, and especially Americans, engaging in them gives the impressing that expressing "thirst" is more taboo than it really is in most places.
Like yeah, obviously don't cat call people or sexually harass them, but a short compliment is pretty harmless in most cases.
I am erring on the side of caution. atm, the urge seems kinda aimless.
Lots of human urges are pretty aimless when you think about it. What purpose does the urge to step on that crunchy autumn leaf serve? Nothing. Do people still do it? Of course.
I'm not criticizing you specifically, but it seems to me that the idea of self-denial for the sake of self-denial is in itself a pretty puritan trait.
Yeah I agree with this as well. Like for most Anglos sex and nudity are inseparably intertwined, as if there's no reason to be nude except as a prelude to sex.
Again, it's like a strain of puritanism or other hyper hard core religious conservatism. A milder version of Islamic fundamentalists forcing women to wear Burkhas lest men be tempted by their faces or some shit.
And yeah, a few people in this thread jumping to the conclusion of "harrasment" when talking about compliments, which is just absurd. At least where I am, most people enjoy giving and receiving compliments based on their appearance as long as it's not overtly sexual. Like, yeah don't go up to people and tell them they have nice tits or anything.
Anglos showing up and telling other people that they're sexual deviants for not conforming to repressed Victorian values is how homophobia got started in many colonial countries.
Humans naturally communicate needs. If we didn't have that impulse we wouldn't be where we are now. That said, tis possible to compliment people in an unsexualized platonic manner and then gauge their reaction.
"AHH YEAH BABY COMMUNICATE YOUR NEEDS TO ME IN A NON SEXUALIZED PLATONIC MANNER" :pingu-horny:
Listen, if someone I knew paid me a genuine not-sliding-into-my-dms-motivated but actually sincere compliment and just moved on in the conversation without expecting anything back, I would immediately crush on them. In its own ironic way, being friendly simply for the sake of being prosocial is really attractive to a lot of people.
I thought you were talking about dehydration and I was gonna say it's because people obviously need to let others know they're thirsty because humans are social creatures and need help of others to satisfy that. But I guess that works in multiple ways :thinky-felix:
Ace ish person here who is apparently some type of hot. It’s not welcome when people hit on me in real life. If it’s mild, I ignore it. if they keep it up I ghost them and/or stop inviting them to things I’m hosting.
In online spaces that aren’t horny, overly thirsty posters often wind up being predators trying to see who won’t enforce boundaries.
Also worth mentioning that most women and femme presenting people deal with frequent SH throughout their days. I didn't realize how bad it was until I became more androgynous.
That sucks, and I've also definitely done this IRL in the past. I'm sorry.
Because we live in rape culture
Expressions of attraction outside the accepted modes of communication are an indicator that someone doesn't understand social norms, meaning that they are potentially dangerous.
Even though this is mostly about cis men this seeps into everyone's brain regardless of who is expressing attraction
So bottling it up is a response to that even if youre going to find the space/time to do it in a socially acceptable way where the person youre attracted to has the space to disengage if they feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Or bottling it up is just not connected at all, and just not being interested in pursuing the feeling, or not feeling safe expressing it
Desperation idk :shrug-outta-hecks: I keep it in as much as I can but also very suppressed.
Cause what if it works?
If it doesn't work it doesn't make your day worse. If it does work it stands to make your day much better.
So because of our deep alienation from even ourselves under capitalism really
I'm not sure I really have a goal in mind. It feels more like being love-drunk and blurting out something dopey more than a directed effort towards whatever.
There is a gendered difference in the expression. It generally cool when female presenting persons do it. So that does fuzz the math.
A substantial amount of masculine "compliments" (as in, compliments from masc) are simply re-affirming the patriarchy. Another substantial portion are because of fucked ideas about dating and pride.
