Beauty demands praise [....] [P]erhaps some sort of compromise can be found. I can appreciate people as human beings, too - I can praise spirits as well as bodies, and even better, I can tell jokes and make conversation, etc. I do not know the social 'formulas', though - I hate all kinds of games between people.
There you go. People want to be treated like people. If you're praising someone's beauty you are being a fan, not a friend, but perhaps worse, you are praising something that isn't really core to who they are. And it's not even that they didn't earn that--most of the beautiful girls I knew didn't even find themselves to be beautiful, such that while they may have liked that their boyfriend (c'est moi) found them beautiful, it was kind of alien to them.
Imagine if someone started praising you for being really good at fitting in. After all, they cite that you can tell jokes/make conversation. You might be flattered at first, but ultimately offended because it isn't who you are. Like, jesus you are trying to be your own person and this other person is obsessed with something charming that you do that is ancillary to who you are. Gross, perhaps?
Also, as I mentioned earlier, the games are not a bad thing. Games are meant to be fun, and are always re-playable and made to be won. There are rules to each game, but they carry over to the others. The okcupid profile rule of "look away" or the "don't call for a few days" are bogus rules and distracting. The real rules are more subtle and govern when you talk light and when you talk heavy material, when you should act detached and when you should stop acting detached.
In the end, though obnoxious at first, you will find such games actually serve a healthy purpose. They teach you to at once be yourself, but also be in sync with other people. It's really easy to be one or the other to your detriment.