Guanajuato
Originally written in EspaƱol. Translated by luluchii3.
Itās been quite some time since I’ve been thinking about how much I missed MSN Messenger. I believe none of the current similar apps can be compared to it.
And itās āthanksā to the present immediacy that the magic of conversations has vanished. Now, anyone can read your message and not reply back because they didnāt catch on, and they are on the street, or at workā¦ That never happened with MSN. Being āonlineā 24/7 has dissipated the exclusiveness of assuring that you are able to talk by going online yourself.
Because when someone went online on MSN, it precisely showed it: that the person was with their computer at their room, with no much to do, willing to talk; and also with an actual keyboard for the computer. Which, honestly, is a thousand times better than a mobile keyboard when it comes to comfiness while writing and elaborating yourself.
Most of my current WhatsApp chats are mere short phrases, unimportant stuff, memes, gifs, stickersā¦ All just cheap immediacy.
Whatās more, with WhatsApp I never know when itās the right time. I donāt know if itās too late and they have left their phone on ringer mode and I might wake them up; also I donāt know if they are reading my messages at the wrong time and they end up forgetting to reply back because the notification was removed.
The best talks in my life, the most profound ones, the ones that have lasted until dawn talking about real stuff comfortably, have been through Messenger. I have never experienced again a conversation like those.
I was talking to some friends and acquaintances exactly about this until one girl told me about Slowly: this app that has made me realized that it is still possible to recover that āmagicā of online conversations in this rushing world that we live in.
I think itās great both that Slowly doesnāt have the option to start a chat like the vast majority of the messaging and flirting apps, and that letters donāt arrive immediately; instead, depending on how near you are to each other, the arriving time will change.
At first, when I saw that a letter was arriving from the other side of the world and would take two days to arrive, I would think: āHaving to wait two days is just a nuisance!ā.
But in reality, it took me a little bit longer to realize that this was precisely the trick: since it is not something immediate or habitual like a WhatsApp message, when you receive a letter you get more excited. Whatās more, thanks to Slowly I have become a more patient person.
The fact that you canāt talk with others instantaneously makes you put more effort and thorough thought to the letter you are planning on sending. You mustnāt waste a whole letter just to write a bare message like:ā Hey, whatās up?ā.
Finally, I would like to show my eternal gratitude to the creators of this app, to those who keep it active, and why not, to all those marvelous people I have met thanks to Slowly.