Everyone writing open letters,

Who are you writing to? Why don’t you address and send your letters to one person? Why is it so impersonal and ‘open’? A personal letter would be nice. An ‘open’ letter on a click-bait website like The Sundial is annoying like a chain email. I feel like taking your open letter, printing it, folding it into a paper airplane, and burning it. And then throwing it.

Let’s face it. You’re probably worried, concerned or annoyed by something you saw your roommate do. He always does that. Why doesn’t he know where the spare batteries are? Oh, my god. So you threw a paper airplane right between his eyes, and now he’s tweeting about you. But you, you’re going to write an open letter and share it on Facebook to his social media face.

Doesn’t he see it’s not about him; it’s society that’s got you down. Society, society, society, man. The times, they are a-changin’, and you’re nostalgic for the Furby you told all your secrets to in 1994. You’ve left home, and you have to order your own ‘guac’ now. Guac is extra. You learned that the hard way. But growing up seems easier when you can talk about it through a very public, very impersonal, very “clickworthy” letter.

It doesn’t matter. “Shake it off,” they say. You’re still young and wanderlust, and you promise yourself you would travel if it were free. If fact, you wish you could be writing open letters from a freight train with only a knapsack and some fucking Wi-Fi. You take the train because Alexander Supertramp did, and he died on a bus.

But as it turns out, you’re not on the road. You’re lingering near campus to catch a bar of the wireless, and it’s taking forever to load this Twitter account with beatnik poetry in Starbucks. If you’re so wanderlust, why don’t you try Dunkin Donuts coffee? Why don’t you take your caramel macchiato frappuccino coolata frittata and leave?

That’s right. You should leave. And take your open letter off my Facebook news feed now. Those things are contagious and oh, so clickworthy. But “An open letter to people that have read a lot of open letters” is the last thing I want to read, and before you can say “O-H!” it will be inspiring worried, concerned or annoyed people to write more open letters about their frustration with open letters.

Your friend in angst,

Sunny

-Travis Filicky, Senior Staff Member