Oh, romance. That chaotic little gremlin with access to your heart, your brain chemistry, and—if you’re unlucky—your Amazon wishlist. For the past 200 years (and let’s be honest, probably much longer), humanity has been whispering sweet nothings through fans, photos, pneumatic tubes, and plant symbolism, desperately trying to say, “I like you, but I have absolutely no idea how to just say it.”
Welcome to the lost languages of love—where longing glances meant “marry me,” secret violets whispered “I’m gay,” and coded fans tried their best to be the 1800s version of flirty texting but ended up more like “interpretive jazz semaphore.”
And guess what? Despite 5G, facial recognition, and the tragic rise of AI-generated Tinder bios, we are still playing the same damn game—only with fewer corsets and more dick pics.
Chapter One: Fans, Flowers, and the Flirtation Olympics
Ah, the Regency era. A time when love was communicated through a sideways glance, a subtle blush, and, of course, a decorative paper object flapped like a pigeon on molly. Enter: fan flirting—because when you couldn’t say, “Let’s get out of here and dry hump behind the hedges,” you said it with an exaggerated wrist flick and a strategically blocked face.
Yes, in 1797, Charles Francis Bandini created the Fanology—an actual fan coded with an alphabet so that women could spell out letters by adjusting their hand positions like a very dainty traffic cop. Romantic? Maybe. Efficient? Absolutely not. Imagine trying to flirt across a crowded ballroom by spelling out “You look hot in that waistcoat” one letter at a time while simultaneously battling carpal tunnel and the weight of your own repressed sexuality.
But it wasn’t all flappy nonsense. There was also a robust gifting economy of flowers, books, embroidered waistcoats, and—wait for it—locks of hair. Because nothing says “I love you” like severed biological material wrapped in a ribbon.
Still, behind the pearls and politeness, these gestures screamed: I want you to like me so much, I’m willing to risk stabbing myself with this embroidery needle and reading Rousseau for compatibility points.
Chapter Two: Victorian Cartes and the OG Selfie Thirst Trap
Fast forward to the Victorian era, where photography was the new Tinder and the carte de visite was your filtered selfie. Want to look worldly? Pose with a globe. Want to look rich? Get a dog and stand near a vaguely Roman statue. Want to look dominant? Lean aggressively on a chair like you’re about to colonize a tea party.
These pocket-sized portraits were the 19th-century version of sending someone a “hey” with a curated photo. And like all modern profile pics, they were carefully staged to say: “Yes, I may live in a coal-dusted industrial nightmare, but LOOK at this waistcoat.”
Some even turned these cards into collages, creating elaborate scrapbooks that basically said, “Here are all the people I love—or want to bone.” It's Instagram, but analog, and with 200% more tuberculosis.
And don't even get me started on the posing props: books, art, flowers, swords, pet parrots… whatever screamed, “I’m dateable AND culturally literate.” Because in love, as in life, it’s all about branding, baby.
Chapter Three: Berlin’s Nightclub Tubes and the Original DM Slide
Now let’s hop over to 1920s Berlin, where nightclubs weren’t just for dancing—they were for espionage-level seduction delivered via pneumatic tubes.
Yes, Berlin club-goers could send messages—and yes, actual cocaine—to potential lovers across the room. You wrote a note, popped it in a tube, and a vacuum system whisked your flirtation over to its destination like a horny bank deposit. It was seductive, risky, and included content moderation—yes, they had humans screening for rudeness before delivery, the analog version of Tinder’s community guidelines.
It was the closest we’ve ever come to combining James Bond, love letters, and drug trafficking in one hot, smoky room. And it worked because, as with everything in the hidden language of love, the message was clear: I see you. I want you. Let’s skip the awkward chat and send small narcotics.
Bring it back. Someone tell Elon.
Chapter Four: Queer Codes and the Language of Survival
Of course, for LGBTQ+ communities, coded language wasn’t just cute—it was often a matter of life and death. Enter the green carnation, violets, lavender, and basically every flower Oscar Wilde could stick in a lapel without starting a riot. These symbols didn’t just say “I’m looking”—they said, “I’m one of you.”
Wilde’s green carnation was intentionally meaningless to the uninitiated, which made it perfect. Because when society is determined to criminalize your love, ambiguity becomes armor.
And then there were the “friendship ads” in gay magazines, or handkerchief codes, or literally the invention of entire fashion languages (hello, earrings and Doc Martens). These weren’t just pick-up signals. They were battle-tested systems of safety, kinship, and survival masquerading as style choices.
It’s the secret language of community, shouted quietly in crowded rooms.
Chapter Five: The Digital Age—New Tools, Same Cluelessness
Let’s not fool ourselves. We haven’t evolved beyond the awkwardness of flirtation—we’ve just digitized it. Where once people exchanged cartes de visite, we now exchange selfies filtered into oblivion. Where we once sent perfume-scented love letters, we now send emojis. (Nothing says passion like the eggplant emoji and a clock.)
Dating apps are just Regency-era balls with less dancing and more data mining. A bio, a few staged photos, and a carefully curated Spotify playlist? That’s your modern courtship portrait, my friend.
You’re still basically waving a fan and hoping someone gets the message.
Chapter Six: Rituals, Rebranding, and Why None of This Works
The modern dating landscape is flooded with recycled versions of all these old codes. We flirt with memes. We gift playlists. We craft texts with the precision of a 19th-century love letter, only to be ghosted by someone named “Bryce” with a crypto wallet and a golden retriever.
We’ve rebranded Victorian repression as “playing it cool.” We’ve turned nightclub tube messaging into Instagram stories aimed at one specific person but captioned for everyone else. And we’ve made the violet—the symbol of queer love—into a Taylor Swift lyric on a custom bracelet sold on Etsy.
Somehow, despite all this, we’re still lonely, still horny, and still hopelessly bad at saying, “Hey. I like you.”
Epilogue: Love in the Time of Overthinking
All these secret languages—fans, cartes, tubes, hashtags—share one tragic truth: they exist because we are terrified of being vulnerable. Every coded flower, every elaborate tube message, every carefully chosen prop in a selfie is one more layer of armor.
We’re still spinning rituals and symbols around the rawest of human needs: connection. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it just results in heartbreak, or worse—an unsolicited podcast recommendation from a Bumble match.
So maybe, just maybe, we should put the fans down, log off the apps, and try saying what we actually feel. Out loud. With words. You know, the unhidden kind.
And if that’s too hard, there’s always embroidery. Or cocaine tubes. I don’t judge.
TL;DR: We’ve spent 200 years developing increasingly weird ways to avoid just saying “I like you.” Maybe it’s time we stop pretending a fan flutter or a perfectly timed emoji is enough, and start getting brave. Or at least learn semaphore.