>reading letters Why were people so intimate over letters in the past? Even fan letters are like that. I just read a Tolkien letter where he's thanking someone for a book recommendation and he's spending half a page talking about how grateful he is to be friends with him. It's just gross to be sentimental and heartfelt, like it's actually revolting, grow up. If someone sent me a letter crying about some shit I would burn it and kill that person
I find that contemporary people are really 'prudish' about emotion and intimate feelings.
>>25594533I would’ve been happy with any kind of human interaction, even written mail. Of course, if humans in question are not plebs, otherwise ew.
>>25594533you should give kingsley amis’ letters a read.
>>25594533Because unlike you they don't needed to invent new sincerity just to cope with virulent nhilism, they just lived in the world full of meaning and sincerity
>>25594533The medium is the message. Because sending a letter isn't free, there was always the incentive to get your money's worth. Hence, a epistoler was inspired to write more. Furthermore, continuous correspondence meant you could only send a letter every week, which meant you would try to get a week's worth of communication in one envelope.
>>25594533There seems to be this approach under modernity that people of the past were much more simplisitc creatures in terms of emotions, probably because many people of the past didn't subscribe to the progressive beliefs of modernity, and therefore lacked "empathy". But it is the complete opposite. It is clear people of the past possessed a much tighter grasp of their emotional being, and were capable of experiencing a wide range of nuanced feelings that we are simply incapable of. It's probably why modern day people seem to read close friendships among confidants as being sexual and/or romantic. Reading literature and experiencing the thoughts and feelings of people who lived before this modern hellhole we live in, it is clear that we're the race of unfeeling mutants, and not them. Even the emotional range of ancient literature is far more than what the ordinary person could feel. Could the average person feel the same kind of kinship Gilgamesh felt for Enkidu? I very much doubt that.
>>25594757Something about the psychology of whiplash from train carriages
>>25594757>seem to read close friendships among confidants as being sexual and/or romantic. Name some examples.
>>25594545I'm trying, but it's making my eyes hurt.
>ayo wassup dog>Regards, nigga>*two weeks later*>wassup nigga whacchu want>Regards, dog >*one week later*
>>25594536plus, i don't think the majority can even write, not without employing AI or something which will inevitable hollow whatever was written. can your politician or actor even write whatever is ambling inside his head?i am also a fan of reading diaries, memoirs, letter collections.recently read Kinsgley Amis' memoirs. we are living in an age where not one of our 5 most famous politicians could eloquently defend democracy or the market economy (or any other economic system).
>>25594545He thinks he's funny
>>25594533>It's just gross to be sentimental and heartfelt, like it's actually revolting, grow up. If someone sent me a letter crying about some shit I would burn it and kill that personI feel bad for you.
>>25594533>Why were people so intimate over letters in the past? Even fan letters are like that. I just read a Tolkien letter where he's thanking someone for a book recommendation and he's spending half a page talking about how grateful he is to be friends with him. It's just gross to be sentimental and heartfelt, like it's actually revolting, grow up. If someone sent me a letter crying about some shit I would burn it and kill that personReread your own post and realize that you're not a mature adult.
>Hal, who's empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naive and goo-prone and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not-quite-right-looking infant dragging itself anaclitically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool. One of the really American things about Hal, probably, is the way he despises what it is he's really lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pules and writhes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia.
>>25594533Are you an American by any chance?
>>25594533HAHAHAHAHA THIS NIGGA READS OTHER PEOPLE'S DECLARATION OF FRIENDSHIPAND HE'S JELLY THAT HE GOT NO LOVE LETTERS HIMSELFDANG DUDE, GET BUSY
>>25595876yeah he’s pretty good. i think americans do generally struggle with him though.
>>25594868you’ve never read a shitpost before?
>>25594533https://youtu.be/WxSjSyYIfHw?si=R8blj5KaDm8TaoUZ
>>25594533lmao yer a faghahaha
>>25594561>a epistoler
>>25594561This is true. I send letters to my friends sometimes and i do tend to make them as "worthwhile" as possible.
it is moving and heartwarming to read an 18th century gentleman's letter that ends, in all sincerity, with>I am with great respect and perfect esteem Your Most Obedient and Humble Servantand also to see several variations on that theme across a great deal of correspondence with the recipientthe moral seriousness with which such friendships were maintained is a standing reproach to degenerate and infantile moderns
>>25594533Why doesn't Clit Harrington go comedies? He's a funny guy.
>>25594765There is a pop-history revisionist school which claims that Abraham Lincoln was gay or bisexual due to intimate correspondence with male friends
>>25594533There is still time for you to grow up, lad.
>>25594533A big criticism of mass adoption of the telephone by 1920's boomers was that it was killing the art of letter writing in society.
