Why do I feel a stronger pull towards people I’ve been physically around with? Distance, physics, matter matter.
The connection we feel online or with an author of the book is a relationship we have with our minds. These are all mental stuff contacting mental stuff. No physical to mental reactions that touch on platonic abstractions, the objective glue.
This is the reason why no matter how great a picture we have painted in our minds of someone we have met online, our feelings could instantly change when we are with them. This is chemistry. Relationships can occur but these are incomplete and by virtue of their incompleteness they will be weaker than relationships with physical components.
How to be in a relationship with place?