"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.
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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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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.
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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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And you are right that it is usually intended as genuine compliment and that it is lacking in discernment.
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There are so many things wrong with the “well said” response, most of the time.
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The lack of engagement with what is actually said is usually because they genuinely have nothing to say and often only hazily understand as well. They recognize something worthwhile was said without actually critically grokking it.
When younger I simply used to think of them as idiots, but now I think of them as busy normie absorbed a narrow life who have had limited opportunity to develop intellectually past school/college. In their own narrow worlds they are usually smart.
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