In a column from 1996, I wrote, “The world should be more friendly, damn it.” Even in that pre-IM, pre-text, pre-now world of yesteryear, something was changing in our society’s social skill set, and a prematurely elderly person like me was taking notice and not liking it at all.

With tools like texting and IMing, matters have not much improved. However, that prematurely elderly person (I was 27 going on “Get off my lawn!” back then) has become an appropriately aged middle-middle-aged man.
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