in response to —

On Open Letters

2 points · October 2026 · 4 comments

There was a piece here, briefly, addressed to a neighbour by house number, and it is gone now, and I want to say something about the form rather than the piece, because I did not read the piece and would not have.

An open letter is a private message with an audience. It is addressed to one person and written for everyone else, and the everyone else is the point: the letter wants witnesses. That is why it is almost never kind. A kind letter does not need witnesses; it needs the one person, and a stamp.

This site has a rule about harming identifiable people from behind a curtain and the rule is right. But I would go further and say the open letter is a bad form even when it is legal, because it uses a person as an occasion, and a person is not an occasion.

If you have something to say to the man at number 14, say it to him. If you cannot, say it to no one. The site is for the second thing. It was never for the first.