"Well said" is possibly the worst compliment you can give a writer.
It is the sort of thing someone with no taste for good writing says to someone who has no serious interest in, or talent for writing, and is doing the writing equivalent of drunk karaoke.
Conversation
Replying to
I hear “well said” as sneering: ‘your content is shit and your thought process is uninteresting, but you used language well’
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Replying to
I’d be inclined to hear it that way as well, but generally the people who use it IME mean it as a sincere compliment. They are just not cultivated enough in their reading tastes to tell cheap beer apart from fine scotch so to speak. They’re rarely sneering.
Replying to
Hm, yes, “sneering” is too strong. But there seems IME to be an implicit message when someone withholds engagement that the thing said is not worth engaging with.
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