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The board · New York · Switch

I write long messages and the chat window is not built for it

Posted as i_write_long_messages, 11 September 2026

Looking for
correspondence first, meeting soon after, both done properly
Experience
Eight years, three dynamics, two of them mostly written.
Around
Manhattan, New York

I write long. Four or five paragraphs, thought about, sent once. The chat window on this app is designed for the opposite of that: a thin column, a keyboard covering half the screen, and a culture where anything over three lines looks like a lot. I have had people reply to a considered message with a single word, and I no longer think that was rudeness. The format taught them to.

Thirty four, Manhattan, eight years in, a switch, and largely made of language. Two of my three dynamics ran mostly in writing, which is not a substitute for a room but is not nothing either. The instructions, the reports, the corrections, the whole architecture of it happened in sentences.

So I am looking for somebody who reads. Not somebody impressed by length, which is a different and worse thing. Somebody who will answer the actual question in paragraph two rather than the easy one in paragraph one.

Direction is negotiable and I would rather work it out with a person than decide it in advance. Both are real for me. What is not negotiable is the pace of correspondence, which for me is a proper letter every day or two rather than a hundred fragments.

Not looking for a pen pal forever. I want to meet inside a month. Not looking for anyone who finds this intense, because it is, and I have stopped pretending otherwise.

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What to have sorted before you reply

Which direction is on the table this month is not in the post, and asking flat out reads badly. That takes a conversation, and a conversation needs a room you can walk out of.

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