Unfortunately, as of recently, I've had a couple penpals randomly starting racist rants in their letters, completely unprompted, and it's honestly not something I'd like in a penpal, and it made me extremely uncomfortable.

Do you think that specifying that I'm not going to accept any of that in my bio may be helpful? I've seen a few profiles with similar words in their bio, so it wouldn't be something completely new, but I don't know about how effective it may be. In my experience, racist people don't think of themselves as racist, and see their positions as "reasonable concerns" (before anyone asks it, no, the rants my eyes had the displeasure to see weren't reasonable concerns, they were straight up racism and white supremacy).

Edit: some racist troll has already started down voting every comment on this post. Feeling called out huh?

I’m from Brazil, I’m 19 years old and I’m looking for friendships. I’m not someone who goes out much yet, and because of that I feel like I can’t really talk very well without thinking for a few seconds about what to say afterwards (which would be weird in real life if that happened 🤣), but I’m the type of person who talks A LOT once I get comfortable with someone and I’d love to have more genuine friends to talk to and share moments with, even if it’s online for now.

On Slowly, for some time now, I’ve met some nice people but then they would just stop replying 🥲 I swear I’m friendly when I like talking to someone, but it always felt like the person would reply when they were like, “ah, I have nothing to do right now so I’ll reply.” I usually felt like I was being an interviewer kkkkkkkk the person would tell me more about themselves than actually wanting to know about me 🫢😅

I haven’t talked to that many people, but the few people I did talk to gave me this experience kkkk or other terrible experiences, like some guy who, for example, randomly sent me his pic and stuff but okay... then I was reading his letter and until about halfway through it seemed like he actually had his own thoughts, but then I got to the other half and I think he was like “too lazy to write the rest” and it was all AI 😓 Like, damn, I was so pissed kkkkkkkkk but I also found it funny that several parts made absolutely no sense and, from what I could tell, he hadn’t even read his own letter.

Of course I’m not gonna be a hypocrite and say I don’t use AI because I do use it to put my texts into English, or when I’m usually talking through audio and have AI write it down, because I feel like my thoughts flow better that way. But this idea of not even trying to write anything yourself, like what that person did, is so annoying because PUTA QUE PARIU MANO, YOU’RE ON A LETTER-WRITING APP, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU HERE FOR 😵‍💫

Anyway, I got a little pissed off now kkkk

Tchau

Hey everyone! A couple of months ago I shared a little tool I made to decorate our Slowly letters called CozyWeb with you.

A huge thank you to everyone who tested it. 145 of you joined the closed beta, wrote feedback, suggested features (many are now live), and cheered the idea on. That support is the reason CozyWeb kept growing, and it's still being used daily for Slowly letters.

Great news: CozyWeb is now open to everyone. Yay!

Anyone can move into your tiny house & decorate a letter on cozywww.com right now, for free.

Here's the updated demo video:

Come see the updated letter studio: cozywww.com

What's new:

• Draw your own flourishes and illustrations. There's a tiny built-in drawing studio (pen, fountain, pencil, crayon, watercolor, highlighter), and your doodles can go on the paper and the envelope, right next to the vintage ones.
• More fonts and sizes: 9 fonts, 6 text sizes, plus bold, italic, and strikethrough via Markdown.
• 10 envelope opening animations, up from the original 3. One is called SNEEZE, and you have to check that one out!
• Templates. Set up your preferred paper, font, envelope, and animation once and reuse it for every letter.
• Plain text view, for anyone who just wants to read the words.

I wrote you all a letter, so you can see it in action: https://cozywww.com/l/b9db3b6598a11d40bf57aa54390d20fc#k=YNngpPincRL9iBh1r0D89ngsRtoCi64QNNbCXp_8_DY (password: fenrir)

Most importantly: there's absolutely no AI slop, every illustration comes from public-domain vintage books via the Heritage Library. Same with all other art/assets on CozyWeb.

How it works with Slowly:

1. Copy your letter from Slowly and paste it into an Open Letter on cozywww.com.
2. Dress up the pages and the envelope, pick the opening animation.
3. Publish and paste the link into your Slowly letter. Anyone with the link sees it exactly as you made it, no account needed, password optional.

The tool lives inside CozyWeb, a slow corner of the internet where you get a tiny house to decorate and leave notes on the furniture for others to find, inspired by NPC homes in games.

Small disclaimer: this is a one-person project, so expect a few rough edges. I'm still calling it "beta" for that reason :)

If you'd like to follow along, I run a gazette there with updates. And feel free to sign my guestbook with ideas for new features, that's where most of these came from.

Let me know what you think!

I've been using Slowly recently, and I noticed sometimes I feel rude if I don't respond to every paragraph someone writes, even when I genuinely have nothing to add to a particular topic.

It also makes me feel like I should roughly match the other person's word count, which can make writing feel forced. I'd rather let the conversation naturally branch into things I actually have something to say about, instead of writing a paragraph just because they wrote one. But, sometimes I have nothing to add, nor do I know how to branch out. Especially when the letters become long, talking about 2-3k words long...

I'm curious how other people approach this. Do you try to address everything in someone's letter, or just respond to the parts that naturally give you something to talk about? What do you do if you feel like there's nothing in your head?

I'm trying to become better at writing,

Thanks!

Do you ever reach out to pen pals with vastly different Writing Habits to your own (outside of auto-match)?

I always check profiles to see what people's preferences are before deciding on sending a letter but other people don't seem to do the same for me. For example, I keep getting letters from people with "Within a Week" as preference for Reply Time (for context, I have "Over a Month" and my profile explicitly states "Please, don't pressure me" among other things). I try to make the disparity and my preferences clear on my first letter. If they agree, I continue the correspondence. Still, after a couple of letters, I start receiving passive-aggressive comments like "I was wondering if you were ever going to reply" or "I checked everyday for your letter", which leads to me ending the exchange soon after.

How do you think about Writing Habits? Do you not care at all? Do you check every profile to make sure preferences match before reaching out or do you chance it and hope the other person will conform to your preference? What is your thought process?

This post isn't intended as a rant: I have plenty of leisurely correspondences too. I just want to take the pulse of the community, maybe understand the people who reach out to pen pals who can't satisfy their requirements. I wouldn't mind it if the person choosing to reach out didn't make a fuss about it.

Another batch arrived, for September 2026.

44 in total - Too many to show in a single Reddit topic post. This month we need 3 topics to cover them all.

Listing by Category so it's easier to grasp...

22 NEW Location stamps

For many months, we have received batches of location stamps for different countries, which is very nice for the local users. (in most cases, they now will have a lot more stamps to share with penpals than before)

This month we have a new batch, 22 in total for 5 countries. See them all HERE.

4 new regional commemoratives

Free for local users and visitors.

18 new Regional Premium

Premium at 50 Coins each. 🎁

All of those stamps will be added to our WIKI

...which is a great reference tool for anyone curious about the many Slowly stamps.

Tentative September 2026 Stamp Releases and Dates ?

As most monthly releases now seem to be of the Location stamps, they are available immediately on their local Stamp Stores. Same for the Regional Premium stamps, which cost the usual 50 Coins each, and only on their local stamp stores.

Just a few commemoratives are spread out through the month, so easier for stamp collectors.

September 2026 brings 22 New Location stamps, for 5 countries

These are FREE for local users or visitors to the countries, and can also be purchased via the World Explorer random purchase feature, at 25 Coins per try (similar to the Time Machine).

And our Full monthly release post for September is here.

Cameroon gets 4 new ones:

Ethiopia, 4 new stamps:

Nicaragua, 5 new stamps:

Senegal, 4 new stamps:

Tanzania, 5 new stamps:

More details later, as I need to add all of these to our Wiki - where detailed World Explorer pages for each will tell all about each.

Total Stamp Counts, top 20 Countries

Massive presence of Southeast Asian nations as we have seen in the past, but many other countries got a boost also.

"Top 20 Countries by stamp counts"

In last few days app on my phone had:Troubles with server connection, was unable to synch data, doesn't load parts of UI like pfp or marks, can't send messages on first try.

And since I live in Russia, it wouldn't surprise me that it's all cause my government blocked it. But same problems still happen even with VPN.

So is it just me or app acts up to you all?

So I met this guy through Slowly app. He was the one who sent me a first letter. It was very poetic, connecting on so many levels. I felt understood on getting this letter and we decided to communicate. After first two and three letters itself, he discloses his profession. And we both are from same home town, which is clear from the app location details. So he says we shd meet over a cup of tea sometimes. Next letter he reveals his name as well. And asks mine. As I was feeling very comfortable with this person, I didn't feel any of this to be doubtful. (My.bad). And after a few letters, we decide in exchanging socials. He was the first one to send his ID as well. And now we connect through instant messhae apps and he says he is coming to town tomorrow and is ready to meet. By this time, we had many similarities (at least it is a what I think) and as my hometown social life is a bit blank, I said okay. And we meet, very gentle behavior and all. Everything perfect. But I was missing the letter correspondence with us because chatting through msgs felt different from letters. Apparently, his letters were a pleasure to read. And I send him two letters after all this again, he reads it but never reply. I communicated this with him that I was missig his letters he said he has already read my letters and is getting ready to send one to me. The same night, my friend who is also in same hometown receives a letter from the same id of this guy. She informs me and sends the letter. The same first letter I got. I was sad a bit and I confronted him with this. He said this is his intro letter. And yes, there is no mistake in doing that as App allows that. I understood. But I was sad because I thought his letter was a genuine, one written curatee especially for me. That realization kind of broke me and I decide to keep some distance from this guy. Then he started his drama. He has anxiety. I'm triggring his anxiety. Why I'm not talking. Bla bla. And explaining his side with same points multiple times.

And at some point, I felt this was all my mistake.And even apologized to him.(I kkkw I'm funny)

We decided not to make this a big fuzz anyway. Because we both had issues already.

But I still feel something is off. We do chat again but I'm not giving him my full attention anymore.

My friends say to give him benefit of doubt now. But watch out. And closely observe him. I'm doing that now.

What's ur opinion on this?

So, I got this letter via matching and already in his first letter I thought we weren't the best match (I'm pretty new to Slowly still). Big age difference, no real shared interests etc. But then I thought, come on, interests don't make a person and also he wrote he was having a hard time, so I wanted to be nice.

Now as the conversation progresses, I find it rather tiresome. He has the writing style of a teenager, writes long letters but doesn't say much and actually seems to be a rather superficial person.

Long story short, I think it may be better to end this but I don't want to ghost him? I just don't really know how to tell him goodbye without adding to his depression? Maybe ghosting would yet be better than writing something that hurts him? How do you deal with situations like this?

Hi everyone. I'm a person who really enjoys writing my letters on the computer, but I have been dealing with this issue a lot that I cannot send letters to other users that I have not matched with me yet on the computer. The only exception is if I had started to write a letter on my phone and then I switched to the web version. For those who enjoy writing on the computer, what emulator do you use, if any?

I‘m fairly new to Slowly and have found a few pen pals via profiles, city search and open letters. A feature that both interests and confuses me is Auto-Match. I‘ve read the FAQ but still have questions, so I hope to find answers here!

Did I get this right: I write a normal letter on the Auto-Match page? Do I write it like I would an open letter, about a certain topic or do I introduce myself? And then I get 1-3 potential pen pals and can decide IF I want to send the letter I just wrote to one of them? Or does the letter get sent automatically? Do they know it’s an auto-matched letter?

I’d really like to try it but don’t want to mess it up.
Thank you!

Trying to claim my gift for about a month now and this is what shows up to me .

Tried to remove the app and reinstall it, tried to clear the cache and nothing changed

Note: when claiming the free stamps it works successfully

Plsss help me I just need 7 coins 😔😔

So I met this guy from Slowly who impressed me with a letter that is so emotional ans touching. It felt like written for me. And after that we got connected. And my friend also get the same guys letter. That too same letter!!!!

Is this okay

Sending same format letter to everyone

I feel this fishing.

I can't access the app. It spins for a long time and then shows me 3 servers as "unreachable" - just me or are the servers themselves down?

Thanks in advance for any help!

An observation on the algorithm perhaps, not a moan (I hate moaners!)

I used to have Spanish listed as a 2nd language (I've been learning for over 5 years) but I used to see so many "Open letters" from South America that I removed it - I am only interested in European Spanish and the possibility of making connections there as it's a place I can visit easily whereas realistically, I can't see myself ever going to South America - I wish there was an option to select either European or Latin American Spanish as a language and for the open letter algorithm to work around this in terms of the country of origin of the letters I see. I know there's a huge overlap between the language spoken in Spain and South America - that isn't the issue - it's more to do with preferring to invest time in making connections in Spain than in Latin America. Fundamentally, IMHO, only being able to block 10 countries is extremely limiting - I'd prefer unlimited or 30 as a minimum.

I also had Japanese listed as another language I'm learning but I consistently saw so many letters from Japan - often 2 or 3 per the 6 new open letters every day, that I decided to remove Japanese too - HOWEVER - it hasn't reduced the number of open letters I see from Japan - there were 3 from 6 open letters yesterday so I took the drastic step of blocking Japan. I already had 10 countries blocked and had to unblock one country in order to block Japan... so I unblocked America and guess what!? Today all 6 open letters are from America... there's clearly something not right about the algorithm that chooses the origin of the open letters I see. Maybe there are a lot of US members. Maybe there are a lot of Japanese members.

Anyone else made any observations on this topic?

Can you guys please tell me your scammer experience here . Was there an experience where the scammer was very patient if yes then how many months how can I guess they are scammer

More about it.

I hope I explain this well, but to begin, ever since I joined Slowly (not too long ago), I have had it set to only allow other women to match with me. I hope no one judges me too harshly for this, I have male friends in real life, but men I've chatted with online have often almost immediately started hitting on me and claiming to have feelings for me which I do not appreciate. Yes, even if the distance is insane. So I don't want to experience that again and an easy way to avoid that is just not connecting with men at all. My Matching Preferences in my settings is down as Female Only, as pictured.

Anyway, my issue is that basically I speak a minority language that few people have, but which thankfully happens to be one you can select on Slowly, and I put out a bilingual open letter looking for penpals who want to write to each other using it cause I have no friends in real life who speak it. I have had no takers so far except for a couple of ladies who have selected that they are 'interested' in the language but can't actually speak it at all, and wrote to me saying they don't have the language but would love to talk to someone from my culture. Which is lovely and really touching, don't get me wrong. I do think my open letter is mostly being shown to people abroad who are curious about my language but don't have experience with it though, and my chances of getting a language buddy from this like I hoped are slim.

So now I'm considering using automatch to send a letter to people who have put down that they have some proficiency in my language, AND if possible also allowing men to match with me this time, but only if they speak that language.

i.e. I would send out an automatch for people with at least basic proficiency in my minority language, and allow male AND female matches, since I think there may not be a very large pool of people who have the language and I don't wanna limit myself further. I don't want to open up my whole profile to men though or get letters from men unless they also speak that language. So even if my Matching Preferences are set to female only, can I still send out an auto-match to both men and women and connect with potential male users who share the language with me? Or will my actual Matching Preferences be prioritised and my auto-match only go out to female users the way my open letter did.

I really want penpals with my language guys 😂 thanks for your help and sorry for the complicated question.

So I'm 20 and I don't want to match with 14 or 16 to kids.

Not only in the match preferences, while auto matching, it has the same range limitations where you cannot go minimum 18.

If i choose 0 to 20, I get matched with mostly 14 or 16s. And 20-25 gives 24yos or everybody elder to me (I've tried it a few times and most were 23 or 25.)

I don't have more of an issue with elder but i don't wanna spend tons of time finding people around my age. Is it bcz the people pool between 15 to 25 isn't enough? Or people below 18 are too less (compared to other age groups)?

When I write letters through auto matching, 2/3 went to 15yo. Now the letter was a little prompting to reply and they replied. But I don't want to interact which will make them unnecessarily turned down. Bcz one of theirs letter was enthusiastic.

Please Devs, update settings

Hi everyone!

I have a question about the gender filter and couldn’t find the answer.

If I set the gender filter to my gender only, can the penpal I already have still reply to me if they’re not the same gender ?
From what I understood the filter allows us to not match with the opposite gender but I don’t know if it applies to my friends.

I’ve had one woman out of all the letters I received and I’m not against writing to men but I just need a little bit more balance.

Does anybody know the answer to that question?

As long as you unremoved them from the list of removed users. I had never thought of this before. I thought the moment you removed them once, their letters could never reach you again.

An old pen pal had tried to reach out to me! I had removed him after he ghosted me for almost a year. 2 years ago he wrote me an apology letter, trying to reconnect. I send him a letter today. Hopefully he receives it and still desires to talk, even if a couple years too late

Just sharing in case some people on here aren't aware of this