FROM LOVE LETTERS TO DIRECT MESSAGES — SPEED AND SINCERITY IN COMMUNICATION
Opening: The Time It Took to Say “I Miss You”
There was a time when saying I miss you required ink. It meant weeks or months of waiting for a letter to be delivered to its recipient. It meant waiting weeks or months for a response.
We wrote sentences, by hand, on sepia-toned paper, using ink. We didn’t rush through the process of writing a letter. We took our time, ensuring we told the recipient everything we wanted them to know. Then, we folded the letters, inserted them in envelopes, sealed the envelopes with wax or glue, and carefully addressed the letter before entrusting it to distance for safe delivery.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, courtship often unfolded through letters that traveled by carriage, rail, or ship. During the American Civil War and both World Wars, lovers and spouses waited weeks for correspondence. Letters often had to cross oceans to reach their intended—while many letters made it, others simply never arrived.
In a recent episode of All Creatures Great and Small, a resident of Darrowby waits for news of her husband, who was off fighting in World War II—news that doesn’t come until after the war has been declared over. The delays were not intentional. It was simply the nature of life; it was a simpler time. Communication required friction.
Communicating at the Speed of Light
Today, the same sentiment appears as:
miss u
thinkin about you
a heart emoji
a late-night “u up?”
These messages take less than a second to send. We watch ourselves and others type these messages via typing bubbles. Technology has given us the ability to edit or unsend these messages. We have the option to read and respond to these messages, or not. While letters embody patience, direct messages embody velocity.
It’s easy to say we’ve traded depth for speed, that there has been change in the way we communicate. And while that statement is accurate, sincerity remains, albeit in a changed form. Communication has revised what intimacy looks like—we’re not less sincere, we’re just faster in the performance of our sincerity.
When Distance Was Structural
Before we had the technological advancements of telephones and screens, distance meant delay. Letters were asynchronous purely out of need. We wrote to someone without knowing how they would receive and respond to our words. We wrote and revised carefully because once something was sent, that was it. We had to wait for delivery to be made before we could learn how the news would be received.
In the eighteenth century, relationships were epistolary, meaning they developed via letters before two people spent time together in person. Likewise, Victorian era correspondence was ornate, restrained, and governed by social convention. There were manuals which provided letter writers with instruction on proper expressions of affection, apology, and longing. From the time the first letters were written, desire followed format.
Even before letter writing changed in the eighteenth century, seventeenth century figures, such as Samuel Pepys, documented their emotional and social lives through journal writing that blended performance with confession. Not only did the written word carry authority, it carried self-consciousness. Slow writing structured, rather than eliminated, performance.
Sending letters requires effort which signals value. However, it’s important to note that effort and sincerity are not the same. Beautifully phrased declarations could conceal ambivalence. Carefully folded sheets could carry rehearsed devotion. All of this placed a frame of expectation around sincerity.
While we waited for letters to arrive at their destinations, we had time: to reflect, to imagine the recipient reading the letter, and time for longing to mature in absence. Letter writing makes waiting part of the emotional architecture.
Revolutionary Speed: The Penny Post and the Telegraph
Society didn’t make the leap from letter writing to smartphone overnight. The change happened much earlier and more slowly, beginning with the Uniform Penny Post in 1840s Britain, which drastically lowered the cost of sending letters.
This change meant correspondence was no longer limited to the elites who could afford the cost of sending a letter. Communication became more accessible, increasing in frequency and expanding intimacy through accessibility.
This change was followed by the telegraph in 1844, changing the meaning of distance—messages that previously took days to arrive could now be received in minutes. However, sending messages via telegraph was costly, and brevity was important. Emotion became condensed: Arrived safely stop Thinking of you stop. Because of the compressed language, the telegraph is seen as a precursor to the text message. Feelings became fragmented and reshaped how we expressed ourselves via the written word.
In 1858, Europe and North America were connected almost instantly, although imperfectly, via the first transatlantic cable. This connection enabled longing to cross oceans without waiting weeks for a ship to arrive. These inventions made speed technologically possible, although it wasn’t yet universal. Acceleration came incrementally, reducing friction with each new innovation, but never entirely eliminating it.
The Telephone and the Voice of Immediacy
With the advent of the telephone, we not only enhanced the speed of communication, but we were able to alter exposure. Alexander Graham Bell’s patent of the telephone in 1876 made a new form of emotional immediacy possible. We replaced ink with voice, script with tone. We couldn’t rely on careful phrasing alone anymore; now hesitation, breath, and inflection entered the exchange.
Beyond the telephone, the twentieth century ushered in other innovative technologies: telegrams for urgent news, the ability to make long-distance calls, and answering machines that allowed callers to leave messages if someone wasn’t able to answer the phone.
Imagine being able to take a telephone call during World War II. When it was possible, the calls were brief, costly, and there was often interference that cut the call short. Scarcity intensified meaning, making the ability to hear a loved one’s voice an event.
Despite all this, performance persisted. Lovers chose their words carefully. Families masked fear with reassurance. This newfound speed of communication didn’t eliminate the need for strategy; it merely reduced drafting time.
The Postcard, the Diary, the Archive
While letters were private, not all historical communication leaned that way. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, postcards were popularized and often sent without being enclosed in an envelope. This meant anyone handling the cards could read the message, and intimacy coexisted with exposure. Public vulnerability was not invented by social media.
Diaries also had an audience, even if it was an imagined one. Anne Frank kept her diary while in hiding, addressing entries to “Kitty.” She never imagined millions of people would eventually read her innermost thoughts and feelings. Diaries have made the line between confession and performance porous. Letters from people like Virginia Woolf reveal stylized intimacy. Her letters were artful and reflective, occasionally bordering on theatrical. For her, sincerity and craft were intertwined.
History doesn’t equal a golden age of unfiltered emotion. Instead, it presents us with evolving mediums that shape how emotion appears.
The Age of the Perpetual Ping
We now live in a world where technology is available 24/7. People expect us to be accessible all the time, whether at work or at home. Being able to communicate digitally has removed nearly all the friction of prior communication forms. Email accelerated the workplace exchange. AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger, in the 1990s, and Google Hangouts, Slack, and other systems popular today introduced presence indicators—people know whether we’re available or not. We are always visible.
The advent of text messaging further compressed language. Abbreviations became commonplace and our response times shrank. Smartphones put just about everything we could possibly need at our fingertips. We inhabit a state of near-constant connectivity. Direct messages, Instagram DMs, email, voice notes, text messages all keep us available all the time. The barrier to entry is minimal and the archive is optional. Letters require intention, direct messages require impulse.
It’s important to bear in mind that digital spaces do not eliminate performance. Rather, they intensify it. According to sociologist Erving Goffman, everyday life is divided into front-stage and back-stage behavior. This division is complicated by social media. Private messages exist in environments shaped by screenshots, forwarding, and algorithmic awareness. There is always the possibility of an audience. In today’s social environment, sincerity is continuous micro-performance. Response times carry meaning. Emojis are calibrated. Silence itself is communicative.
The Politics of Response Time
When it comes to response time, we are often caught between a rock and a hard place. If we respond too quickly, we risk signaling neediness. Taking too long to reply can signal indifference or a lack of caring. Read receipts can wound. Typing bubbles induce anxiety. Messages deleted before they’re sent suggest hesitation, which is invisible but palpable.
Where sealed envelopes symbolize longing, the typing bubbles symbolize suspense—presence without content. When we ghost someone by not responding at all, we transform absence into ambiguity. We can no longer blame silence on distance or delay. Timestamps make absence legible, and speed clarifies responsibility. Sincerity becomes strategic timing.
What We Lost, What We Gained
With the advent of technology, we have lost some things, but we have gained others. While we lost the tactile ritual of letter writing, of sending and receiving, we have gained immediacy and the ability to repair misunderstandings in real time. We lost the ritual of unfolding paper. We lost the tactile archive of affection—boxes of letters tied with ribbon. We lost built-in patience.
We are now able to sustain long-distance intimacy through daily contact. We have access—the democratization started with the penny post has culminated in nearly universal communication. We should keep in mind that speed doesn’t extinguish sincerity; it merely redistributes it, multiplying opportunities for connection while reducing the weight of exchange. While earlier eras embedded friction into communication, ours embeds acceleration, but neither guarantees depth. Both shape its expression.
The Return of Deliberate Slowness
In today’s busy world, there is a counter-movement happening. Handwritten letters are coming back into fashion as gestures of intention. Voice notes are bringing back breath and tone. Long-form newsletters are helping us to reflect. Greeting cards are mailed as a sign of ritual rather than necessity or obligation. All of this means we are reintroducing friction voluntarily.
Our human need to be known, missed, and answered hasn’t changed. Whether we’re looking at Anne Frank’s diaries or Virginia Woolf’s letters, our desire to be heard and seen persists. What has changed is the tempo. Messages may arrive instantly, but meaning still requires time.