■ 🕑 1. It's good to send emails to friends. │ As life goes on, and we separate from people we cared about before, │ it remains a great practice to send emails to old friends every now │ and then. │ │ It's not essential AT ALL to make a Facebook / Instagram / Tiktok │ / LinkedIn / whatever to stay in touch with old friends. If anything, │ people are more likely to keep their old mail address as trendy │ spyware apps come and go. │ │ Equally, it's easier to keep a friend's mail address for long spans │ of time than phone numbers -- and the kinds of communications we make │ over email tend to be more meaningful than the kinds we may make on │ text-adjacent platforms like Whatsapp or Signal, Telegram, etc. │ │ Do you ever send mails to your old pals? │ When was the last time you sent a personal email? │ │ If you know any old friends' emails, maybe this thread can serve as │ a timely reminder to fire them off a message. Or, maybe it can serve │ as inspiration to exchange email addresses with your friends today. │ │ I hope this thread can encourage you to write someone an email, │ or save someone's email address if you don't have many. Email is a │ great way to maintain friendships over time and distance -- even if │ it's "not trendy" it's also not bad! You would be surprised about │ how many people would be pleased to get an email that's not spam │ from GoogBookBankShopApp and take the time to write a caring, │ thoughtful response back to you. │ ├─■ 🕑 2. │ I'd been neglecting my inbox for some time and when I logged on, I saw │ that a dear old friend had sent me a chain of messages mixed in among │ the inevitable newsletters and various other forms of spam │ │ He asked me how I was doing and told me he was quitting drinking.... │ Then he sent some long emails about how gangstalkers from region X │ followed him to region Y and were putting pressure on him. │ │ Sent an email he regretted sending and then another apologizing for │ the recent involvement, said he was looking forward to future messages │ if I still considered him to be a friend. │ │ It was fun writing up a !!! 5 page response !!! about life updates │ and observations. │ │ Email is timeless, much like textboards. Whether you answer a week or │ month later, you will probably be responded to properly in due time. │ Email is the patient man's game, like many of the best things in life │ └─■ 🕑 3. │ i never used email for anything other than confirmation links and i never │ needed to send emails to my friends since we lived so close, if i ever │ had to talk to them i'd just ride my bike to their house │ that changed when i moved, but by that time we were already using messaging │ apps on our phones, not ideal since i'm now doing everything i can to stay │ away from those spyware in disguise while they don't care │ └─■ 🕑 4. │ You may be able to get friends to install Signal... │ the install process is painless and it's not like they have to do │ anything complicated to use it (you text them, they get a notification) │ │ I managed to get my 60 something year old parents on it no problem. │ │ Email isn't really spyware-free since most people end up using Google │ or whatever, but at least you don't feel pressured to respond quickly. │ What I hate most about FB messenger (and WhatsApp, Instagram, etc): │ that it shows "last active" and has read receipts. │ └─■ 🕑 5. unfortunately almost all of my friends are the stubborn/complacent type when it comes to phones and computers, I tried to get them on something else in the past but with limited success (only one of them gave in)