Nohn's Garden

Love is the most Niche Compliment

In my attempt to write a post every day, I’ve started looking at the “Notes” page on my phone. It's an ugly series of hundreds of bullet points, and I probably no longer remember what half of them mean. Some gems include:

Among many others. Many of these are quick notes connecting two disparate technical topics I’m not qualified to speak on, but which felt important enough to write down. These will probably make up a large portion of this blog if I continue with the daily habit. But a significant portion are emotionally charged in one way or another. This is one post from that portion.

“The more niche the Compliment, the better it feels. Love is the most Niche Compliment.”

Right now, I want you to think about the best compliment you’ve ever received. Not one from someone special, or one said to you when you needed it most. Rather, the compliment that is structurally the best. It probably doesn’t have to do with a specific instance or action, does it? “That outfit looks good!” or “Your project is very impressive” are uplifting, but they’re not great. They don’t stick in your mind; they don’t feel like they’re molded to you.

Would you rather be told “You’re attractive” or “You remind me of a beautiful house with all of the lights on”?

My thesis is that the more specific the compliment, the better it is. I’ve received my fair share of compliments, but two come to mind when I think of the greatest compliments.

When I was 17, I was having dinner for a friend's birthday. We were talking about something along the lines of, “What is your favorite feature about yourself?”. Lots of discussion ensued about eyes, or smiles, or strong jaws, or hairlines. I believe I said that many of my features looked good, but I was pretty neutral about my nose. My friend turned, and without missing a beat, said, “Your nose fits the rest of your face. It’d look wrong if it was any other way.”

When I was 20, I was at a party that was winding down. I can’t even remember what was being talked about. But after I responded to a question, I was told, “You’re one of the only men I know who deserves to have a daughter.”

In both of these cases, the technical subject of the compliment could have been generalized. “Your nose looks good” and “You’d be a good Dad,” respectively. These are, in their own right, fine compliments. But what sets the full versions apart from these simplified versions is their specificity. We can look into the subtext of each one to see exactly what it is adding/how much it decreases the area it takes up in the ‘total space of all compliments’.

“Your nose fits the rest of your face” is a distinct upgrade from “Your nose looks good.” Good could mean it looks better than it used to, that it is inherently attractive, or simply that it isn't problematic. But the longer version specifies how it is good: it is appropriate and complementary to the rest of my facial features. The addition of “It’d look wrong if it was any other way” further specifies this by defining ‘fit’ as ‘not a misfit’ in the Christopher Alexander sense of the word.

“You deserve to have a child” is a distinct upgrade from “You’d be a good dad.” There is a subtextual implication in the sentence that having a child is a blessing, and that not only would you perform the duty of parenthood well, but you also currently possess the karma/nature necessary to deserve that blessing. “You’re one of the only men I know who deserves to have a daughter” is an upgrade even from that. The implication from the speaker is that A) having a daughter as a man is a specific sort of blessing and B) most men do not deserve it. For this reason, the known or implied perspective of the compliment-giver is important in deconstructing the compliment.

Enough talking about my specifics; let’s work out some chains on common topics, from least specific to most specific.

Friendship Chain

You're a good friend < I always feel better after talking to you < You remember things about me I've forgotten I told you < You see the version of me I'm still trying to become

Intelligence Chain

You're smart < You think really deeply about things < You ask questions nobody else thinks to ask < You make me reconsider assumptions I didn't even know I had

Appearance Chain

You look nice < That haircut really suits you < The way you carry yourself makes all your outfits look intentional < When you're explaining something you care about, you do this little hand gesture that I love

Why is this the case? My theory is that specificity can be a proxy for two things: honesty and attention.

  1. Specificity as Attention: Compliments fundamentally convey “I see you” before they convey “I like what I see.” One of the major reasons compliments feel good is because it shows that other people are thinking about you, and, as social animals, that feels great. Being complimented on something you don’t really care about still feels great for this exact reason. A specific compliment acts as a signifier for how much attention the giver is paying the receiver. Generic compliments fall flat in this category because they require no extra thought on the part of the giver: Acceptable sensory input in, generic compliment out. A specific compliment implies that the giver has spent some amount of thought, consciously or unconsciously, figuring you out, attempting to catalog what makes you you. As a compliment becomes more specific, it becomes less likely that the giver has ever said that compliment before, proving that at least some of their thought has gone toward you specifically, and not just toward attempting to map things they’ve said before onto the situation at hand.

The second part of my original note is “Love is the most niche compliment.” In Western monogamous contexts, love is necessarily specific. It is a declaration that, out of everyone I’ve known so far and can imagine, you have such a precise set of features that lines up perfectly with my desires. It is an anti-generic statement. The hyper-specific compliments I’ve talked about before often show up the most in romantic situations. If you could get a transcript of two people falling in love and map out the specificity of each of their compliments, you’d probably break the meter.

It may be the case that sustaining love requires sustaining specificity. When we stop noticing the funny way that they fold socks and the freckle behind their ear and start to flatten them into ‘my partner’, we lose the specificity that started love in the first place.

This may be why growing as an individual seems to be vital even in committed relationships. Neither of you can add to the mental ‘encyclopedia of my lover’ if you’ve run out of things to write about. New hobbies and stories and takes are offerings of specificity for your partner as much as they are self-growth.

In this way, love probably isn’t just the most niche compliment, it’s a practice of mutual attention and growth at the highest level of specificity.