Fun, fun, fun. Less than 24 hours since I wrote my sigh about letters being gone forever I received an e-mail from a friend who currently lives on the other side of the Pond. She wrote me a genuine e-letter, solid 10 k of text, sharing how she had been doing the last months. Well, that felt warm. Thanks, Veronika!
She’s not the only one. There’s my brother Jason (who’s neither my brother, nor named Jason, but that’s a long story), there’s ThunderBlade with whom I still correspond using a letter-maker, there’s this varsity ex-colleague of mine into whom I ran googling for something and we got back in touch again, there’s Mom, Sis and so on. These people are still able (and willing!) to dedicate some time to communication with those who matter to them, and I love them for it.
What I had in mind while writing my rumble was rather this friend of mine who had been searching for an efficient way of communication. Since ever. First he suggested to switch from snail mail to e-mail. We switched to e-mail but he replied, hm, say one e-mail out of every three. Then he suggested switching to a dedicated online forum together with the whole circle of our common friends. I said, “Why not,” and we did it. He was the one who stopped responding after some time, saying it was too inefficient. We tried also the IRC, ICQ, Skype. It never worked. For him. Perhaps because trying however hard he could, the communication would still not happen by itself in zero time. I had in my mind people like him, perhaps craving genuine friendship but unwilling to accept that equations have this unpleasant custom of having two sides. People who got so much used to the 1-Click-Duzz-It-All mode of the online world that they are somehow ceasing to exist off-line.
Ah, before I start myself up again… What I wanted to say: This post is dedicated to all those who really use the Internet to get closer to their friends (and not as an efficient way of putting more distance between themselves and the people around them). Thank you all, whether we know each other or not.
