Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/07/drive-by-compliments.html
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“i hope you’re a part of my neverending story” is the best spontaneous compliment i’ve ever heard.
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hmm. I want his job.
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Since the cynic in me knows we can never have nice things, I am patiently waiting for someone to be offended by said actions/words or claim it was an affront to their person.
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…or brandish a weapon, seeing how we’re now killing one another over $4 chicken sandwiches.
But, as EW&F once said, " if there ain’t no beauty , you got to make some beauty," so I’ll try and maintain the positive vibe of these perpetrators.
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Unless they think you’re a white horse, in which case it is the worst compliment ever.
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And Mr. Rogers is absolutely always appropriate and applicable. 
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Ah! You beat me to it!
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I’ll admit my first thought watching this was “Assholes.”
I can’t help hearing them in a sarcastic & mean-spirited voice. Might tell you something about my high school experience.
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Some of these comments could be taken as hostile if you didn’t know the context. As a general rule I don’t love getting yelled at me on the street.
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Well, that certainly beats the trend (at least in SoCal) some years ago when teenagers would lean out of moving vehicles while pointing their ‘cocked’ finger at you (as if they had a gun). I’m sure it caused more than a few cars to brake dangerously; I know I did. Mine was an white, a-hole, gangsta wanna-be wearing a turned around snapback hat. Made me wish he and his buddies would get into an accident… but with no one else involved.
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I’m sure they cherry-picked the targets who didn’t give them the finger, but still. On Garbage Island, more than nine out of ten people would interpret this as sarcastic heckling. Certainly coming from a man under 40.
I guess it’s sweet they could find this many guileless people wandering around. But those people are also the fertile ground for MLM schemes and hate preachers and Fox News. That’s the thing with innocence; it’s cute in small children and pets, but only because they aren’t responsible for stuff, and they don’t vote.
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I think 2011 was peak internet. Things just got more angry and more commercialised from then on.
Back then there was this nice little sweet spot where we had all the technology, but nobody had quite figured out how to weaponise it yet.
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2001 was even better. Yahoo chatrooms before spambots
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I appreciate what they’re doing here, I think the world would be a better place with more things like this in it. Still,
The internet has taught me that, because we can’t have nice things, this is not actually possible. There is no such thing as a certifiably non-problematic compliment. The fact that Beschizza felt it necessary to phrase the post this way is, I think, quite illustrative.
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Yeah, I couldn’t help noticing that most (all?) of the compliments were about people’s looks. Which can be…problematic. The person giving the compliment is making a judgement. It can get uncomfortable quickly, especially across gender lines (especially male complimenting female on looks—it’s not quite a wolf-whistle here, but for me there is some feeling of I see you and I’m judging you, and if I’m judging you positively you should be happy). As far as I know, most advice for the workplace is to not comment on people’s looks—as in, just don’t go there—and I think the same advice would fit for public spaces.
But if you’re just driving by someone, what else do you have to go on but their looks? So, hmm…what might work better, if one wanted to carry out this sort of activity? Maybe a simple expression of good wishes for the person? Maybe something like Hey, we’re hoping y’all have a good day today! ???
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You make a good point, and you made me reconsider my position on the subject.
(see what I did there?)
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Yes, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head: that would convey the general cheeriness and good will of the group in the car without seeming like they were angling for anything.
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