
Before the Web, Hearts Grew Silent - jpren
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/fashion/before-the-web-hearts-grew-silent.html?ref=fashion
======
rayiner
As a counter to the author's own romantic example: my wife and I probably
would never have gotten together without modern social networking. When my
wife and I met, she was living in Oregon and I was living in Chicago. We met
while she was in town to interview at the law school I was attending. She was
in professional mode and I was a stressed out first year student, and we never
would have pursued a relationship in the days before gchat. But instant
messaging is a very unique medium. The lack of visual feedback tends to
encourage frank conversations, and the "who else is up at this hour?" aspect
tends to encourage reaching out to people you wouldn't necessarily call up on
the phone. By the time of our "first date" months later, we had met each other
exactly twice but already knew a tremendous amount about each other.

------
bridger
I'll bet life was more romantic before spoken language. People weren't busy
talking or thinking in anything but emotion and memories of senses. Let's long
for those days.

~~~
elwell
I don't know if your post is entirely serious, but I like it.

~~~
justinpombrio
Imagine falling in love with someone in perfect silence, knowing them entirely
through their actions, having only the feeling of their presence.

~~~
elwell
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0AKJMGxwpE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0AKJMGxwpE)

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noonespecial
Sometimes I think I was lucky to be one of the last people ever to experience
"love in the time of snailmail" and one of the first to experience love at the
dawn of IM.

I know exactly what its like to write those "long, heartfelt missives" and
check a mailbox like a crack addict and I also know the thousand tiny thrills
one got from that new "ICQ" client's happy little " _uh-oh!_ ".

Which is better? More "real and heartfelt"? I've got only selection bias to
offer. I lost "heartfelt missive" and married " _uh-oh!_ ". Modern technology
rocks like an old man on his porch.

~~~
sspiff
I'm a little to young to have known love in a time of snail mail, but I agree
with the point of your comment: some mystery and romance my have disappeared,
but romance is still to be found in other places, even in the new technologies
that obsoleted the old.

Generations before us also felt like they were missing out on life and love
because they were born decades to late, this is nothing new. People will feel
the same about life at the advent of the Internet in 20 years.

------
interstitial
Road trips with multiple cars were down right dangerous. Cars weren't as
reliable back then, and you could never tell if one car had disappeared from a
flat or car trouble. Meeting points, pulling over, middle men for pay phone
tag. The CB radio did change things -- watch movies from the CB era and you
see the rise of information exchange.

Today you can still have a car chase on the I-70 in the middle of Utah and the
cell phone won't matter to your plot, no reception, no gas either. Just need
to change your setting.

~~~
msvan
But when we get self-driving cars this avenue will disappear as well.
Technology will de-dramatize our lives.

~~~
was_hellbanned
I experienced plenty of drama when my rear wheel began to tear itself apart
riding out of Cambria, CA, or when a rear flat turned out to be the sidewall
disintegrating 60 miles out of San Francisco. Bicycle touring will give you
all the drama you could desire. Meanwhile, I'd love the predictability of
entirely automated transport in my daily life.

------
nullymcnull
"In my day, we lived and loved with so much more depth of feeling. Not like
these kids today with their [x]'s and their [y]'s."

~~~
dmm
I know what you're talking about but where does it end? Are all comparisons to
the past that are anything but glowing about the present invalid?

~~~
jamesaguilar
They're not invalid, but lacking backing data they may have a high probability
of being wrong.

~~~
qq66
This article is just one guys opinion. Why does it need backing data? He's not
making policy recommendations.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Opinions can also be wrong, depending on what they're about. As far as I can
tell from the article, this is not one of those cases. He is simply relaying a
story about one supposed advantage of the radio communication dark ages. But
if you go from there to "Things (universal qualifier) were better before cell
phones," then you have a problem. That often does happen in articles like
this, although not this one.

------
joe_the_user
Hmm,

Book plots, movie plots and real-life drama in many ways revolve around missed
connections.

TV shows where everyone has a cell phone now have to use the device of turned-
off, missing etc phones.

A world of perfect connections would theoretically have no drama but since
connections are never perfect, we would never have that. On the other hand, in
the technologically connected world, missed connections become tech failures.
But someone, the richness of "a passionate glance in a crowded room" seems
much greater than "a pic I saw just before hard drive crashed".

~~~
InclinedPlane
I think missed connections are just a crutch, a plot-writing cliche that was
popular just because it was so easy. But I don't think it's necessary for
great story writing.

~~~
joe_the_user
Yeah, that guy William Shakespeare was quite a hack for using the missed
connections device in Romeo and Juliette as well as most of his comedies.

------
e12e
"Consider the ending of “Doctor Zhivago,” when a chance sighting of Lara on a
city street leads Yuri’s heart to rupture as she disappears before he can
reach her. Had the Internet been around during the Bolshevik Revolution, Yuri
and Lara never would have lost each other. They would have been Facebook
“comrades,” boring each other to death with snapshots of food (“Borscht!”) and
ironic observations of proletariat struggle."

I've sadly not watched "Doctor Zhivago" \-- but I do know that tweeting your
every move while being part of a revolution is a great way to be put against
the wall and shot before it is over.

I'm also a bit puzzled about the premise of the article -- while distance
relationships may have been made more bearable than before, trying to maintain
contact across continents is still a dreary proposition. You might walk around
historical sites, tweeting images of what you see -- it's still not anywhere
near the same as being able to truly share that experience with someone you
care deeply for.

Other than that, good on the author for not letting go of his wife-to-be.

------
danso
Whenever I watch a movie or TV show more than a decade old, I can't help but
think: that would never happen now, they'd be too busy
tweeting/facebooking/instagramming it

Like, "Hamsterdam" in "The Wire"...as if a drug free zone could last two
minutes before someone uploaded footage to YouTube and Buzzfeed got a hold of
it.

~~~
jere
I always thought Hamsterdam was too farfetched to start with. I really
couldn't see that working for more than 5 minutes with all the parties that
were there to observe it.

~~~
qq66
Look at (online, NOT in person) Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia. It's a
tragic real-life Hamsterdam. Police only get involved for violent crimes
there.

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kabdib
Ha. Same deal, except we were using usenet, in the 80s.

I got an email from a sysadmin saying, "Hey, you've got all this mail queued
up for her and she left this job a couple of months ago, should I just delete
it?"

Didn't marry her, that one didn't have a happy ending. :-/

------
drawkbox
I was watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles the other day and much of the
whole plot would not exist with modern tech.

Also, horror movies have a hard time now as well. For some reason they have to
be so far away as to get no reception or in some sort of zone that won't allow
it.

I think Under the Dome highlights this a bit as well.

But there are new plot lines and possibilities. At least flip phones have been
removed from modern tv and movies, and computers/devices are at least more
accurately represented.

~~~
mynameishere
"No signal"

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIZVcRccCx0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIZVcRccCx0)

...I actually wonder why they don't just pretend cell phones don't exist. I
mean, if you can imagine ghosts and zombies, etc, _do_ exist, why not?

~~~
jff
I actually see that pretty often. When the movie requires it, people forget
that they have cell phones. It's the same way the horror movie universe
apparently doesn't have horror movies, or people would know not to split up or
have sex while camping.

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Scramblejams
Yes! I watched the movie "Bullitt" a few years ago and noticed that half the
action wouldn't have happened if the participants had had cell phones.

------
hipsters_unite
> "The outside world fell away, and it became just us slowly unlocking each
> other’s secrets, dreams and opinions, which in those days were not posted on
> “walls” for anybody to casually scroll through. We felt we were the only two
> people in the world."

My partner and didn't put our relationship on fb for maybe six months or so...
but even if we did, how would that have made it any less meaningful? I like
the general 'what if' vibe of this, I'm (just) old enough to have some missed
connections, but the superior tone is just a bit comical.

I think what they've forgotten is that the biggest reason things don't come
together is the personalities of the people involved, or not even speaking out
at all - which will happen regardless of the comms tech available.

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summerdown2
Not only is this still a thing, but it's something you help with:

[http://www.redcross.org.uk/Get-
involved/Volunteer/Migration-...](http://www.redcross.org.uk/Get-
involved/Volunteer/Migration-services-volunteering/International-family-
tracing-volunteering)

"When families are separated by war or disaster, our volunteers search for
lost loved ones and put them back in contact."

Or, outside the UK:

[http://www.redcross.org/what-we-do/international-
services/re...](http://www.redcross.org/what-we-do/international-
services/reconnecting-families)

------
sneak
Now it becomes possible to have meaningful transcontinental relationships,
with cheap passenger jet flights and instant free pocket to pocket messaging
and video calls.

Let us not romanticize the past. Nightly facetime calls are much less drama-
inducing than last minute emergency one-way flights.

~~~
tsahyt
But, wasn't the drama exactly the point of the article?

------
adamb_
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH2B9F-GPm0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH2B9F-GPm0)

