“People linked together by friendship, affection, or physical love found themselves reduced to hunting for tokens of their past communion within the compass of the ten-word telegram. And since, in practice, the phrases one can use in a telegram are quickly exhausted, long lives passed side by side, or passionate yearnings, soon declined to the exchange of such trite formulas as: 'Am well. Always thinking of you. Love'.”
This passage from THE PLAGUE by Albert Camus brings to mind how interaction with friends and lovers with whom hours upon hours were once upon a time regularly spent laughing, discussing, and debating have now been reduced to likes and shares. An unintended consequence of suddenly being separated by time-zones, and the Defacto mode of communication being social media: instant yet far from substantial.
“Some few of us however persisted in writing letters and gave much time to hatching plans for corresponding with the outside world.”