Are compliments a common thing?

A girl went up to my friend and said soemthing along the lines of “you look really cute yadda yadda yadda” and he shrugged it off. That would’ve made my day, i was under the assumption compliments were really rare, but everyone seems like they get them all the time, am I just an outlier? Or am I friends with a bunch of secret society members called the compliment committee that pay others to compliment them to make their life seem better?