Swap out the words “post office” and “letters” with “net” and “status updates” and there you go:

Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not.

In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correstpondence, has not heard from himself this long while.

(paragraphs and emphasis added.)

Can it be that we haven’t come anywhere, socially speaking, since 1854? Hmm.

(Yes, I note the irony that I’m posting this as a blog post on the net.)