Well, as for the letter thing - depending on how you use online dating, you can have the equivalent happen. I think it is much less common as I think nowadays most people aren't okay with falling in love with someone they've never met, for perhaps exactly those reasons. Maybe it was more accepted then, when communication (and the world as a whole) moved more slowly. I have used online dating on-and-off and in the first iteration I would send long, long messages to boys who would send me longer messages back, and so on. So I could see it happening. There was some guy in NY who was quite taken with me but also way older and to be honest kind of creepy and potentially homeless or something. His housing situation was not stable. He wanted me to drive up to NYC so we could fuck in the woods or something. I'm glad past-me nixed that. Very glad. However - I can't say that our long overnight conversations didn't help me deal with some things at the time, either.

My question is, can you fall in love just through correspondence? I am doubtful. Perhaps you can but I would be one of those people that would choose not to. Why go for someone so inherently distanced from you when you have plenty of options right in front of you at the local bar? The counter-argument: 'What if they are perfect for you?' Well, frankly, someone I can't hang out with in person, touch, look at eye-to-eye - that's not my perfect person.

Plus I am a terrible pen pal. When people exist only on the other side of the internet/world, I often don't form emotional attachments to them. You're on the internet; you're not real. This was one reason why Hubski, and the Hubski DC meet-up, was revelatory for me. Not only did many Hubskiers become real, but I realized I generally cared about the people on Hubski as a whole, at least those I'd gotten to know, in a real way. If it had been an online dating meetup or a reddit thing, sure I might have said I was coming, but I wouldn't have. (I wrote this up in a big long post but then a dead link ate it at the time.)

Hubski made internet people real for me. Hi, internet people! You're real! And I care about you!

Or what if they had a really annoying voice, or they smelled bad or had dead teeth?

See. You have to get to know someone in person to find out if it's going to work. They could have a terrible habit of talking with their mouth full or I don't know, something else very repulsive. If you sound great on paper but I'm embarrassed to be seen with you in public, I'm not going out with you. (An unforgiveable sin in my date book: Do not embarrass me. I learned that lesson once and once was way more than enough. A date was unbearably pretentious at my regular sushi bar, I was mortified. He acted like a know-it-all because he'd been to Japan with the Navy once. Mortified. )