smudge wrote:
All this high praise for people you don't know = falseness and insincerity. I don't like it. WP is full of it. It is saccharine.
I have nothing against Isabella but on her leaving thread there is all this, "You are the greatest person that ever lived" type praising and I find it saccharine. If people aimed that at me it would be even worse.
If people are representing themselves on the internet as they really are in life, I don't see what's false about complementing someone you've never seen in person. If people are fake on the internet, if people misrepresent themselves and have some sort of internet persona that isn't genuine and true to their actual character (I've never understood why anyone would want to waste their lives with such fakery, but it's apparently a thing), then the person giving a compliment would be tricked into thinking the person they're complimenting is someone different than they are.
Do you have to actually see a person face to face to be friends with them or to know them? Long before the internet there were pen pals and people who had lifelong friendships across continents but never saw each other face to face.