This magazine nailed what is wrong with social media 150 years ago

@VictorianLondon has spotted a great article an edition of Punch from 1858 about the “House Telegraph” which is clearly a form of social media before social media happened.

Every complaint they had about adopting the Telegraph is even more true with social media:

• Every bore’s finger would always be on one’s button
• Solitude would become impossible
• The bliss of ignorance will be at an end.

Read it in FULL:

The house Telegraph

A Telegraph all over London? The wires brought within 100 yards of every man’s door? A company established to carry it out?

Well – I don’t know. There is a good deal to be said on both sides.

It certainly would be pleasant to be within five minutes of such a message as “dine at the club with me at seven.”

But think, on the other hand, of being within five minutes of every noodle who wants to ask you a question; of every man with a “little account”; of every acquaintance who has a favour to beg, or a disagreeable thing to communicate.

With the post one secures at least the three or four hours between writing the letter and its delivery.

When I leave my suburban retreat a Brompton, at 9 AM for the city, I am insured against Mrs P’s anxieties, and tribulations, and consulting on the subject of our little family, or our little bills, the servants’ shortcomings, or the tradesman’s delinquencies, at least till my return to dinner.

But with a House-Telegraph, it would be a perpetual tête-à-tête.

We should all be always in company, as it were, with all our acquaintance.

Good Gracious, we should go far to outvie Sir Boyel Roche’s famous bird and not be in two places only, but in every place within the whole range of the House-Telegraph at once.

Solitude would become impossible.

The bliss of ignorance will be at an end.

We should come near that most miserable of all conceivable conditions, of being able to oversee and over here all that is being said or done concerning us all over London!

Every bore’s finger would always be on one’s button; every intruders hand on one’s knocker; every good-natured friend’s lips at one’s ear!

No – for all things considered, I don’t think society is quite ripe for the House-Telegraph yet.

If it is established I shall put up a plat on my door with “No House-Telegrams need apply.”

Source: https://twitter.com/VictorianLondon/status/745297378127843328