@404mediaco This reminds me of a kind of hair-brained scheme I had: what if people signed up for a penpal service, but the penpals were highly tuned LLMs and the conversation happened via paper letters on stationary. Is that just nutty? I feel like the absence of the screen and the medium of paper might be calming. And it's something you can count on because you get a letter every couple of weeks.

@banapana @404mediaco Trying to say this in the kindest way I can think of, but that idea misses the point entirely, it's not "nutty". Chatbots did no better than journaling for reducing loneliness. But texting a human being, on a screen, did. Sorry, but the missing ingredient isn't a printer.

@HueSatLight @404mediaco Without justifying my idea further, I respectfully disagree. The immediacy of the response matters (fomo/instant dopamine hits) and waiting builds the mACC (a brain component to do with willpower). The **medium** definitely matters, too. Letters don't have flashing lights and ads. They reflect and don't emit light. I don't think it would be that much different than a serialized novel, and I find reading on paper much more calming than texting.