I recently read an article which was titled "An Open Letter to The Odyssey Online: Holy Shit, Your Site is Bad. Please Stop." After I stopped laughing hysterically, I decided that the best course of action would be to write an "Open Letter" about it.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Pretty sure it says something along those lines in The Constitution, but point is you're allowed to not like Odyssey. I mean I really did not like it that much before I started writing for it myself, but it grew on me. The idea that I can write on a platform that is viewed and shared by so many seemed great to me. However, the author of this article does not feel the same way.
The author of the article I mentioned in the beginning (I don't know their name, nor do I feel like looking it up) believes that Odyssey is a website dedicated to the spread of ideas of a bunch of crying millennial liberals. And all we do is complain (write) about free college, equality, and entitlement. He cites two articles, one about a college student who is against free tuition and another about how "White Privilege is As Racist As it Sounds." The Author then "sums up" the whole website based off of these two articles. That's all we talk about. Tuition and being white. All of us.
Here is where I have a problem.
I have the privilege to work with a lot of great people and hear and read the great ideas that they have. Very rarely do the topics of free college and being white come up.
I can hear the arguments now.
"Well you know he didn't mean that's all you write about" Well if that's what he meant why didn't he say it?
I think what he meant to say was SOME people talk about those two topics. I certainly have never written about them. I prefer to write articles that help people deal with depression, anxiety, fear, and other things that the author would deem "Liberal bullshit." But that's just me. I know many authors who write about fashion, others about sports, and some about pop-culture. There are so many topics discussed on Odyssey that I can't really keep track. But by all means, please only talk about the ones you don't like.
Next, the author also seems to have a problem with the fact that we have articles on Odyssey which contradict each other. I believe his argument was that we have articles which promote feminism and we have articles that are against feminism. I may have my facts wrong, but I do believe those are called opinions. Odyssey is a forum that allows authors to create articles about issues they wish to talk about. Nowhere does it say we all have to agree with one another. We are entitled to write about anything we want to (within reason), some of us disagree, deal with it.
I could probably turn this article into a ten page paper if I wanted to, but I think I'll start to finish up. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but to openly say something is trash just because you don't like a few articles is not okay. Odyssey has about 10,000 writers, I'm sure if you tried to like it you could find something you liked. However, if you'd rather hate, be my guest. Just treat our articles on your Facebook news feed like a racist status from your uncle or a friend request from your mom and ignore them.
I hope that Odyssey can continue to be an outlet for people to express their opinions and ideas openly and freely without fear of being judged. Not because I'm pretty Liberal, but because I'm not a terrible person.
So to all writers: Keep on writing
To all our haters: Stay Peanut Butter and Jealous
Yours Truly,
Ryan Jordan
