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The Architecture of "Not Bad": Decoding the Chinese Source Code of the Void
(suggger.substack.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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In American positivity-laden, self-marketing, businessy English perhaps. But in the UK "not bad", "could be worse", "not wrong", "can't complain", "I've had worse" and so on is often as positive as it gets, or at least was for a long time. American positive-speak gets on British people's nerves; it's perceived as boorish, boastful and unsubtle. And "no problem" is common in English all over. British people do say "brilliant" but only when they're being unusually enthusiastic, or fake, or sarcastic.
A German proverb translates like "No complaint is praise enough ".
An American friend who plays in a band called it the German compliment after her first gigs in Germany. Phrases along the line of "you were bit not as shitty as I thought" have been heard quite often and were really meant as a compliment.