My Open Letter About Open Letters

Dear writers of open letters,

I believe there is a time and place for open letters and at times open letters can be very powerful. However, let's be clear on a few things about said letters. First off, if you write an open letter, expect feedback. The feedback may be positive, it could go viral and you have thousands or millions of supportive comments and shares of your open letter. It may lead to someone supporting your cause for your open letter. However, it may also cause negative feedback, for example the Yelp employee who wrote an open letter to her CEO about the appalling conditions in which she was working in and found herself out of work.

Second, it is wonderful that you are being so "brave" and sharing your feelings with the entire internet community instead of sharing them with the person or people in which you are actually writing to. Perhaps it's just me and the nature of my job that I feel that if you are going to critique or criticize someone or some group that you should address it privately first, allow them the opportunity to not have to deal with the entire internet community because of one person who had a poor experience or was not treated properly. Don't write an open letter before this, you are hiding behind the keyboard and the faceless internet. If they fail to respond in a matter in which you feel was appropriate, publish away, make that letter open (but keep in mind point one, just because you felt wronged, the internet may not agree with you).

Finally, the internet is a very powerful thing and social media is an excellent avenue within the internet, and it should be leveraged when needed. Social media needs to be used responsibly...even Kanye needs to figure this out (really? Asking Zuckerberg for a bailout?). Don't jump on the social media rant-wagon because you didn't get your way or someone hurt your feelings. Jump on the social media positivity-wagon and make it a wonderful place where people write open letters about their journey battling/beating cancer or about how they received such excellent customer service from a company, or maybe even how great their company is to work for. Don't get me wrong, if push comes to shove, you may just see an open letter rant from me (oh...wait...). So let's think about the purpose of our open letters, take the right steps to address a situation before writing open letters and remember that just because you think you were "wronged" doesn't mean the internet will agree with you and the internet world can be mean!

Sincerely,

Nathan McEntee