What Happens When Women Agree With Compliments Men Give Them Online?

If you've spent any amount of time using dating sites or apps, you've come across this issue: the one-line compliment intro. “You're amazing.” “You're beautiful.” “Ur so hot.”

You've either received these messages, sent these messages, or read dating advice that warns against them. They're not the worst opening lines – it gets far stranger and more graphic – but they're hardly the most inspiring.

So what's a woman to do when she receives one? If you're Claire Boniface, a 20-year-old college student, you simply start agreeing.

She posted on Tumblr that she's “doing a social experiment” she simply calls “agreeing with boys when they compliment you.” Instead of expressing gratitude when she received praise, she politely agreed with the sentiments. You can probably guess how it's been going.

Responses are often negative, with men retracting their original compliments. Boniface told The Huffington Post she thinks the negative reactions have "a lot to do with how some men believe that they have the power to tell women what they are, without considering that women have already acknowledged this themselves."

"They don't know what to do when a woman isn't grateful for their comments and so they take away the compliment as if this will change anything," she added.

Gweneth Batemen, an 18-year-old from the UK, shared Boniface's Tumblr post on Twitter and encouraged her followers to consider what it says about the way women are treated on the internet. She began responding to complimentary messages in a similar fashion, and also received hostile results.

"Many responses state how 'vain' and 'conceited' I was for agreeing with their compliment which I found baffling," Bateman said. "Why give me the compliment in the first place if you didn't want me to believe it?”

Even though Batemen attempted to continue the conversations – either by asking how the other person was doing or even by returning the compliment – she still received belligerent replies.

She speculates that some men feel women should base their self-worth off the opinions of the opposite sex, so “as soon as a woman realizes that she's awesome without their help they get incredibly angry."

On Tumblr, 22-year-old student Katie Smith added: “For many men, beauty, coolness, [and] desirability are gifts they alone can bestow upon women. They get baffled, even aggressive when you show you’ve known you possess those things all along.”

It's ok for women to doubt compliments they receive, but they're considered rude or vain when they actually believe what they're told. Anyone else see something wrong with this? Experiments like these won't fix the issue, but spreading awareness is a step in the right direction.