[sudosteph]

Yeah, I'm only a couple of years younger than you and I feel the opposite. I'm always trying so hard to parse the words and meaning, that I easily miss the sentiment of spoken words.

It's one of those things that I realize is probably just on my end though. I've had speech issues since I was a kid and am technically on the autism spectrum. I've learned enough by now so that most people wouldn't guess either of things - but real-time streaming audio processing is one of the few things I just can't learn or accommodate for. It's like I'm always 3 seconds behind in understanding what was just said. Often, I can even recite back what was said to me before I can parse it. I'm surprisingly fine at highly technical conversations / phone troubleshooting though - because it's easier to anticipate the path of the conversation and sentiment isn't usually a factor. Taking tons of notes helps too.

From my experience, text can absolutely convey a significant degree of intimacy - but it takes a great deal of practice to do so fluidly. There is some latency - but the trade-off works to my benefit since I don't have much more latency than my peers on average.