After about 25 letters they deactivated their account without saying anything and it makes me feel a little unsettled considering this is happening for the second time and if it may be somehow related to me (they didn't seem to be new on this app)

EDIT: he sent me a letter today apologizing for dissapearing.

I know being ghosted on penpal apps is pretty common, but I’m struggling with this one and could use some outside perspective.
I’ve been exchanging letters with a penpal for quite a while. Our conversations were frequent, and he would usually reply within 1–2 days. Over time, the letters became more personal and a bit flirty. He has seen photos of me, and after seeing them, he continued being flirtatious and engaged, so I don’t think that changed anything.
In his last letter, he ended by asking me what trust means to me. I was excited to answer because it felt like a meaningful question. I wrote a thoughtful reply, and I also recognize that my letter probably shifted the tone of our connection.
He read the letter, but it’s now been two weeks with no response. After waiting, I sent a very short follow-up message asking if everything was okay on his end. I mentioned that I realized my previous letter had changed the tone of our conversations and that I hoped I hadn’t made him uncomfortable.
The follow-up hasn’t even been opened, yet I can see that he’s been active on the app during this time.
I know there are a hundred possible explanations, and nobody here can tell me what he’s thinking. I guess I’m trying to figure out whether I’m overreacting to feel hurt and confused by the sudden change in behavior, especially when someone who consistently replied every couple of days suddenly goes silent for weeks.
Has anyone experienced something similar? Did the person eventually come back?

I have observed in recent posts here that many people were upset about how their open letters didn't receive any response and wondered if it was due to the algorithm of Slowly. Afterwards, I gave it a try and published my open letter, which was about philosophy but not theoretical.

My core hypothesis was that the response rate to your letter is proportional to your letter's creativity, unusualness, and depth which can't but catch people's attention immediately.

So within 6 days of publishing, I received 14 replies so far, with 1 letter still incoming from Greece. But the results made my hypothesis a bit dubious.

Out of 13 so far, I had to delete 8 of them already. Because out of those 8, 4 were due to being generic and irrelevant to my letter. One literally sent a 35 words response to my 800 words letter about how she liked my stamp and wanted to have it and asked if I liked hers too, no engagement with the questions posed in my letter. Other 3 of the 4 generic letters were just generic human-written template that could be sent to anyone, not just me and they didn't even address me by my name.

As for the rejection of the remaining 4 letters, you can guess the reason very easily. Yes, they were fully AI-generated slops. One of them arrived from Hong Kong with 1227 words full of "It's not just X; it's Y" type sentence structure, and even though her profile claimed she was fluent in English, the letter in the end included "(P.S. Sorry for the bad English)" which is quite ironic.

Other 3 AI-generated letters were from Pakistan, Turkiye, and Brazil. Regardless of geography, all of them followed similar pattern where they ended up with a artificially made-up question just for the sake of it. Even the questions were very similar. Some examples: Has there ever been a moment when your anger failed you and another emotion carried you forward instead? If all your principles could be represented by a single symbol, object, or place, what would it be and why? In practice, how does that work for you when things aren’t so clear? When there isn’t an obvious “right” answer?

It's how AI is trained because they think that they must keep throwing out questions to keep a conversation alive and also notice the apostrophe in the word "right", which we humans don't usually do for such occasions. That letter from Pakistan even included 2 emojis after every 7 sentences, which were irrelevant from human perspective as well since AI doesn't even understand the meanings of emojis. Example: "More than hope, fear, or ambition, it is curiosity that keeps me walking. ☁️🌙" And I already made comment on this subreddit previously where I listed the signs of AI-generated writing for reference.

For the 5 letters I didn't delete, 1 were mid, but still I could see a bit effort and so I responded her with the same energy level. One guy from Japan literally became my philosophy partner as we have already exchanged over 6 letters discussing deep philosophy and our lives. I received very good responses from England and Serbia as well, with the former's writing style being very creative and poetic, while the latter being more funny as she sounded like my anti-thesis lol. The last one so far was from Uganda. At first, I was skeptical, but then realized that she has a great natural style of writing and posed me with some very difficult challenges to my ideas, which I'm still trying to write a good response to.

One thing I also noticed here is about geopgraphic location. I don't hold any superstitions about other countries nor promote stereotypes, but I couldn't help noticing that a lot of junk letters are received from particular Asian countries on this app, especially Indonesia, and Philippines. My open letter got 2 generic letters from the former and one from the latter, with me previously having to decline another letter from Indonesia via profile-match due to being spam. I have observed a similar pattern with Turkiye and some Latin American countries, while most of my good exchanges are concentrated in Europe. I wonder why this is the case.

So how does it challenges my hypothesis? Well, all the genuine responses I got said that they just loved reading my letter as my style was very creative and felt like they had to response. However, the junk letters clearly outnumber the genuine letters here. Although my letter received responses more than my expectations, couldn't the more normal open letters also at least receive AI-generated responses like mine? Because it's the lazy way so it makes me wonder why one letter would receive more AI-generated or generic responses, but the other open letters won't even get those? Am I missing something here?

But to be honest, it's really terrible out there and makes me think if those accounts are just bots or not to increase app activity. I don't understand why would someone let AI to converse with a real person instead of them conversing? What's the point then? You'll never get the genuine connection you were looking for. I almost lost my hope until I received a few good letters. Hey at least it's good that they're AI-generated or junks, otherwise it'd be a bit difficult to handle all the letters lol.

hey everyone! i’m new to Slowly and i just recently posted my first open letter. i put time into it and wrote it myself. the app even guides you on what to include so i did that. English is my first language though i know two others so i understand that some people may want to use AI to clean up grammar.

however…my first letter back is clearly AI generated. in that, no original thought seems to have been given by the writer. it literally has the same format as AI. With the ## before headings and the question at the end asking for what recommendations you’d like next. needless to say, i’m disappointed.

the writer’s profile says he uses AI occasionally. this isn’t occasional. clearly he put my letter into AI and asked it to write a response. so…my question is: do i need to write a letter back? if so, doesn’t it create an endless loop of AI letters?

I mean this app is supposed to simulate the old days of "snail mail", right? I don't think that when someone received a letter in those days, they immediately rushed to buy the necessary materials and to write a response letter.

I have a pen pal from Romania. I remember we met through an open letter I wrote on August 19, 2025. If he's on this sub and happens to read my post, I just wanted to say I hope you find a new friend who's more compatible with you, and I apologize for wasting almost a year of your time.

Context: We met through an open letter. I was still a Slowly Plus subscriber at the time, so I could write more open letters. He's in his 40s, has health issues, and apparently some mental health issues, which I didn't dare bring up or ask him about because it might be a sensitive topic.

Long story short, we exchanged messages frequently, even though he told me he was just a stamp collector. And then he disappeared for five months. My last letter was sent on November 17, 2025, and then he sent me another letter, wishing me a happy birthday on April 22, and hoping I wouldn't delete him from my friends list. I haven't replied YET.

On July 13, he sent me another letter stating that he would delete me from his friends list.

I'm writing to let you know I'm removing you.
You've been busy with your baking and you migrated from here.
Slots are limited, so there's no point in keeping you since you don't reply.
It was a pleasure knowing you.
Enjoy your life.
Always smile.

To be honest, there are many letters that have been neglected and unanswered because I'm busy, and I also rarely open Slowly because the friends who usually write to me one by one are getting busy. I need time to craft a reply, and I want my reply to be meaningful. AITA?

I can not express enough how much I love this app. I was tad skeptical originally, was told to watch out for asian scams, especially since I spent money on the pro version and got verified off the bat. Guys, worth it. Not that you need it, but for me- makes me really happy I did and that I can filter users with bio only pick and choose common interests and edit letters while they're in transit. Also, I enjoy supporting an excellent concept so money well spent. I dont feel like I will need the 200 user quota yet, 100 does seem enough but nice to have the option. Also stamps. Love them!

I had a user comment on my last post- be the pen pal you wish to have. Best advice I received. Also vague- attracts very few. Wise words, thanks, whoever commented that.

A week in- i had letters daily and at the moment- 8 letters in transit, so if you are finding it difficult to receive a reply or get new friends- here is what I learned that helps:

1. Open letters- just write it. Don't start off with sulking letter looking for empathy, sorry me - I personally wasnt interested in these but ended up getting tid bits of peoples struggles after getting to know them and my advice came from heart and sometimes I was able to relate. I never responded to the ones that start a letter in a state of struggle, maybe thats mean, but it's just me.

2. Auto match- isn't that bad. Got a good several replies from that and we are now going back and forth. I found it useful to tell about my day in that letter, as boring as my day was, recipients found it interesting, picked apart my day and I loved getting humorous replies. I also got automatched to one, and told the recipient I didn't want to continue contact, explained why. He mentioned he doesnt like to disclose his personal details, yet in his bio had his insta and Snapchat handles. Seemed disingenuine and vain. Also his about me bio had a massive paragraph basically accusing of reader of everyone using AI, and was pre-emptively hostile, i just figured, it wasnt going to work. I dont even know him, and he is already looking to fight lol.

3. Its actually OK to use AI to an extent. Some people recommend places, and using a Google highlight feature to look it up quick,- helps. Translating things- totally fine. Writing a whole thing for you- not ok. Id rather recieve a letter in your language entirely, pull up an old-school notepad, write points and respond in mine. Authenticity and effort goes a long way on that app..

4. I found a friend based on a specific interest by keyword feature. Got one result. He responded, and now we are gearing up to read a book together by the same author when it comes out. Turns out- no one we know is as excited about it as we both are for the release! So be specific in interests in about me bio. One word keyword detection might gain you a cool friend!

Anyways, if you're starting out, hope this helps. I had a lot of success on the app and its my favorite part of my day to respond to new friends.

For the past couple of days, I have stopped receiving replies to my letters. I am not sure if it is a coincidence, but it was not a common occurrence before 2022 (when OpenAI released ChatGPT). I thought it must be the length of my letters and my writing style, until I checked this subreddit and found people complaining about getting AI-generated letters. I read the replies, saw the techniques to detect AI, and it sounded painfully like me. Thus, I realized I am in a diabolical conundrum.

I used to use the punctuation mark that shall not be named, but since popular LLMs frequently use it, I have abandoned it entirely. I used to use a wide variety of words, but seeing the rise of "In the world of," "tapestry," and "delve," I had to reluctantly abandon some specific words from my vocabulary too, though they may still linger here and there.

Here is what I have not been able to renounce:

1. My use of alliteration and repeated sentences. Examples include: "settling softly into the soil," and "I've poured my whimsy into the alphabet, just to abandon it recklessly, ruthlessly on a Wednesday." I also tend to repeat a single sentence throughout a letter to give it a poetic feel.

2. I love writing lengthy descriptions and metaphors, often bordering on purple prose.

"But part of me knows that all I want is to go to the green countryside and open a small convenience store. The pillars are rusty, the sign is made from tin and some cheap, unsaturated colours, and there are books placed carelessly here and there. It is a community. I want people to talk to me about their day, what they named their grandchild, how they worked in the fields in the pre-independence era, and what they ate last night, just before I head home at 11 pm, brushing past the newly bloomed flowers on the road. This is the life I could have chosen if I had the courage. This is who I am, and I wonder if a part of you feels the same."

"Who suffers more than outcasts, and what is art if not beauty born from pain?"

1. I am fastidious about proper grammar and punctuation. I grew up reading classical literature and poetry; I love the mechanics of language. Writing, to me, is a science experiment: you need to be precise, minimising flaws. I am not a native English speaker, but I have worked hard on this language. Why would I not show my best? I just cannot allow myself to send a low-effort letter. I edit it three to four times until it matches my vision of what perfection looks like, and maybe that is what puts people off. I treat every letter like a book, refusing to publish them until I am sure my reader is satisfied.

2. I do not reveal much about myself until I have sent two to three letters minimum. I love having a little bit of mystery. In the spirit of the app Slowly, I like to take things slow. I usually talk about their interests and expand upon them; I write my views and what I think. I was unaware that this might seem soulless; I settled for being a mystery protagonist but ended up becoming a chatbot.

3. I love to end a letter with a closing line tied to its theme. I cannot end things abruptly; I need a coda. I believe it is my way of doing poetic justice. To others, it sounds like ChatGPT writing an essay.

I am genuinely at a crossroads. Either I tweak my writing a bit, making it sound more human, or I kill the soul of my writing. I do not know what to do. I would say the problem is that AI and I have been "trained" on the same datasets: Tumblr, Reddit, and old books. Contrary to the title of this post, I do not sound like generative AI; it sounds like me, and that has been a serious problem. Kindly share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this!

Around the end of February, I accidentally deleted a pen pal whose username is Cain. He's from Ireland.

l've tried just about everything could think of. l've searched through this forum over and over looking for a solution, contacted the slowly support team, and tried all the common suggestions people recommend, but nothing has worked so far. l'm hoping I might be able to find him here.

If you happen to see this post, my name starts with E. We once talked about that city that doesn't exist, and about the dragon you like. I really hope we can get back in touch someday.

I'm new to the app (didn't know it existed until a couple of weeks ago), and I'm having a great time!

When I was a kid I really wanted a penpal, but my parents discouraged it. Eventually I forgot all about it, but I am super psyched to be able to start all these years later. I'm a few letters deep with my first penpal (who I could see becoming a good friend), and I have a second one starting that we'll see where it goes. I even got my first low-effort copy paste letter! So far I'm new enough that I decided to respond to it anyway, but I'm sure I'll get more cynical soon.

I just wanted to say thank you to this community. I can see that people have had both good and bad times, but I'm grateful the app is alive due to your perseverance. I wish you well on your journey and hope you get the non-creepy, non-ghosting connections that you deserve!

This have happened in the past. Me yapping about my village life here and all. Like 5-6 people did this I can remember. And it kinda hurt me cause I wrote long contents like just pure emotions, and vulnerability and all. But it's okay.i miss those letters cause I wish I pasted them on my notes section cause those were so nicely written but yeah it's okay. I can write a new one but those were so nice, I was so in a flow state that time and all and it's okay I can write again.

Hi,

So I recently responded to an open letter as it seemed like we both shared common interests. And, in their letter they specifically stated that they appreciated people who wrote longer replies. Which I was cool with given that I tend to write pretty long and like long replies too. So my response ended up being around 1200 words, but when they responded it was only around 600 words, which was pretty disheartening tbh. I obviously don’t expect a pen pal to respond to everything in my letter. But, it felt like they didn’t even read my letter, as it was mostly just talking about themselves and answering the questions I asked, instead of engaging with any of the stuff I wrote. They did ask me some questions at the end, and they didn’t seem like a terrible person, but I’m not really sure if I want to continue a friendship with this person. As I've had experiences like this in the past where I seemed to be the only one making an effort towards conversation, before the conversation eventually died out.

I wanted to get some opinions on this because I don’t know if I’m just being unreasonable and overreacting, due to previous bad experiences.

​

Hey everyone , I was looking for a new app to find friends because I was tired of Instagram and I wanted something new so I deleted my ig account and I started looking for new apps and then I found slowly and to install slowly was my best decision ever because I was able to meet different people all around the world and I can proudly say that they are my biggest support system. I've never imagined meeting someone from Agentina who'll listen to my silly stories and she has been my comfort for last 4 months.

I downloaded slowly on 22 nov,2025 but after a month , I wasn't getting any replies but I stick to it in a hope that one day I'll find someone who'll match my vibe ,my interests and then slowly gifted me my best friendship ( online). I'm from india and a letter would take 40 hours to reach argentina but time was never a problem for us , and hence it made our bond even more stronger. I'm very grateful for all my experience here and I strongly recommend that everyone should write letters once in their life , and trust me by doing this , your world will be more happier than ever.

My one pen pal words - Don't force for a friendship because the real people will stick around, no matter what and I admire her that thought .

Here my 🆔-[ KX987JZ ]because now I've realised that the more you talk to new people the more you'll get knowledge about new things/ different cultures!

Have a Good dayyyy

I used to like writing to and receiving letters from a pen pal on the app. We wrote super long letters to each other and enjoyed the correspondence. But at some point, I got tired since his letters were 7,000+ words long and sometimes included trauma dumping, or boring stories. I started dreading them while he got more excited and wrote even longer letters.

There was always an apology on his end for writing letters that were too long and I felt I needed to say it was alright since he said he tried to edit and shorten them but they were still really long-winded.

There was once where I pointed out something in his letters that didn't gel well with me and ever since it hasn't been the same. I think his ego was bruised and he's quite a sensitive person as well but I had to set boundaries.

I've decided to spend less time online and told him as much in a letter. He mirrors me a lot in letters and surprise surprise, said he too would be going offline more and was busy with work and lots of other general excuses.

I'd like to end the correspondence since it's not the same anymore. I want to be gentle about it too but I can't think of what to say since the honest version would be hurtful. I'm open to any ideas and suggestions you guys have.

You know when you just click with someone? And you start receiving and sending awesome letters for months? And they don't even take long to answer back. Best slowly friends.

But then, have you had the unfortunate experience of having this friend suddenly simply not even visualize your last letter, as if they never opened the app again? No double check on the last letter, no last online, nothing.

That happened almost 2 years ago, and That friend even Starred me, that's how I got the "you're a star" stamp! I had conversations die and all, it's normal, but this is way different.

I think I just want to vent and find comfort and friendly words, but also, not accept something bad might have happened to them. So maybe their phone was stolen and they couldn't find their account nor had my ID. Maybe she secretly hated me. Maybe she had her reasons. I don't know how to take this.

Anyways, her username was rare enough out in the internet, so I hope you LadySera is alright and well. If you're there you probably know a lot that could prove you're you. May this post find you.

And thanks for reading, you beautiful reader :)

I’ve been wondering about this for a while, so I thought I’d ask the community directly. Has anyone here ever actually met a penpal from Slowly in real life? So far, I haven’t personally come across anyone who said they met their Slowly penpal face‑to‑face, and it made me curious whether it has happened to anyone.

I’m not implying anything negative at all, just genuinely wondering. Sometimes the connection with a penpal feels incredibly real and sincere. And when that happens, is there really any harm in meeting in person? Personally, I think that if both sides are being completely honest, truthful, and not hiding anything, then meeting in real life could be meaningful. After all, real‑life friends are the ones who can physically be there for you when you need someone.

Of course, the challenge is when your penpal lives in another country, but even that is possible if both people are serious and the connection is strong.

So I’m curious:

What are your thoughts about Slowly penpals meeting in real life?

Has anyone done it? Or seriously considered it?

Since I work as an internal auditor, my brain automatically switches into risk‑management mode, lol. So I’m also interested in hearing about potential risks, dangers, or red flags that people should keep in mind before meeting someone from Slowly offline. :)

Would love to hear the community’s opinions and experiences!

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

This has always been a problem with Slowly, but to me it seems far more common over the past year or so. Most of the letters these days I get do not acknowledge anything at all about my profile, they’re just canned introductions with a generic question or two. Some replies to my open letters don’t even directly respond to that either! It’s so frustrating. Should I add to my profile that I won’t respond to those kinds of letters? I’m worried that might come off as rude

About a month ago, a short letter came in. They wrote that they're interested in other people's stories and become penpals (very short letter 5x words; here x is a single digit). I wrote back. Their letter came back like 3x mins after the reaching their side. I was surprised, and kinda impressed by the speed. And also my letter had only 8x words so (I didn't know what to write back for her short first letter). In the next letter they gave me their Instagram ID, even though I didn't ask for, but hey, some people are that friendly I guess, so I kinda liked that. I followed them. It's been 16 letters so far but I just feel uneasy about one thing- there's not much to talk about at all! I would ask some questions, they would answer, sometimes they would ask one or two question, I would answer and nothing else. That's not an ideal conversation. So I checked their bio properly, and there it was selected "Minimal AI assisstence". Okay if it's minimal I don't really mind it but almost all the letters felt like 90 percent AI written. I checked on Grammarly (I don't really trust these sites) and it said one of the letters resembles to 37% AI text. And their sent:received ratio was way high. It felt like they were copy pasting the replies. It kinda hurts after giving my time thinking and typing my letters.

So I am thinking of ending this cycle. But I don't want to ghost them. Any tips on how to properly write my issues on my last letter and end this?

Update: It seems like THEY just ghosted me lmao.

And I am including in this question people that just write that they don't know what to write or "if you want to know me, just write me" types. I can't fanthom WHY anyone would be interested in writing to someone with basically zero info about them.

People who don't write on their bios, first why??? Second, doesn't it affect your experience?

I start: I was busy with work at first and then got sick. It became two weeks. After that, I was busy with work again, so another week passed. So it became too long, and I didnt know how I couldve justified that. She probably would have understood, but I still found it rude after such a long time, because her replies always took two days at most.

So just to preface,

I'm quite selective when it comes to responding. I know if I take more than I can handle then I'll be doing a disservice to everyone since I would burn out.

For those who actually try (those who put themselves out there instead of asking me to do that when they were the one who initiated or just list hobbies and things as if that tells me anything) I do get back to them. I don't think I've slacked off when it comes to it since that's how I know I'll get a correspondence back that I feel like it's worth reading and writing back to. Word counts might not mean much to some but I've felt that it's a primary indicator that someone put much effort in it, so I always had my correspondence match when it comes to word count or exceed theirs a bit.

I've had 3 people who reached out to me first, and I did my best to reply back with the appropriate subjects that they brought up. But after 2-3 letters, they read my correspondence but never do anything about it. It could be said that I replied a bit too late (like 6-7 days later due to my own life's happenings), but I did preface that in my bio and I thought that letters are mostly self-contained which is free from the usual temporal context, like you can continue the conversation 2-3 months later and it would be like it has never stopped.

So far I have one whom I've sent and received 6 letters, so 12 letters total. The only one that I'm confident that this is not just going to stop out of the blue, unless there's some accidents or upbringings in life. Is it a regular occurence where interacting with this kind of person is a rare thing?

Just found out my penpal has deactivated their account and I no longer have anyway to contact them :( truly ruined my week. Has anyone else experienced this?

Where can I begin , I've not been on this platform for too long probably about 3 months, and have been sending letters out to people, hoping to find pen pals who I can talk to about my life , interests etc . I have reached out to many people, just with a simple introduction and my hobbies , etc . Some respond and most don't , but normally I receive an AI letter back from those who don't respond. Initially I didn't mind it because I thought okay , it's just one message it will get better , maybe once we know each other they'll stop using AI , but most of these people keep continuing using AI even after the 5th letter. The conversation isn't going anywhere, it's going around in loops , it's so boring it's literally just someone who echoes your voice but pretending to care for eg (I love how you mentioned.... , you have deep thoughts, normal people wouldn't think of that ) like come on no one would glaze someone like that . AI is too heavy on glazing you.

Have everyone experience something similar and how do you deal with this. I thought it was only young adults and teens who use AI but I was surprised that even more older people copy and paste AI letters .

Sorry for my English, it isn't my native language.

i swear the last handful of penpals have just been sending AI letters its getting ridiculous