Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Have Dating Sites and Facebook Been Around for Over 100 Years?

From A Modern Instance, published in 1882:
He...began to rummage through the letters scattered about it.  They were mostly from young ladies, with whom he had corresponded, and some of them enclosed photographs of the writers, doing their best to look as they hoped he might think they looked.  They were not love-letters, but were of that sort which the laxness of our social life invites young people, who have met pleasantly, to exchange as long as they like without explicit intentions on either side: they commit the writers to nothing; they are commonly without result except in wasting time which is hardly worth saving.  Every one who has lived the American life must have produced them in great numbers. While youth lasts, they afford an excitement whose charm is hard to realize afterwards.
More shit changes, the more it stays the same.

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