Dear Open Letters,

We need to talk. You used to be a way for people to communicate real, substantive concerns to individuals or groups. You were written from a jail in Birmingham, Alabama, when you made the Christian case for a fight against segregation. You were written to the President of France in a successful attempt to uncover deep-seated antisemitism in the French government and to free a guilty man. You were even written by a hospitalized soldier and read aloud on the floor of the British House of Commons in an expression that many British soldiers fighting in the First World War were disillusioned with the complacency and mediocrity of their government.

But you’ve changed. You are no longer the issue-raising, support-wrangling, principled expression of concern. You have sunk to the depths of journalism, joining listicles and shoddy renderings of GIFs as pithy attempts to gain page clicks and shares from college students avoiding studying for their next test.

Take a look around, Open Letters. What are you being written about today? Are you still transforming the world by appealing to the masses? Or have you become a cop out? As I look around at the open letters to ex-boyfriends, to roommates and to annoying people in class, I can’t help but feel as though you have experienced a fall from grace, sinking from your position as a means of global change, down to a medium for passive-aggressive complaining about other people in life.

So, Open Letters, I have but one request: Start mattering again.

Stop being written about the petty relationships in and out of which we are all bound to fall. Stop being written about future relationships, too. Start being written, again, about the difficult issues in life. Start being written about real, important issues, from politics to healthcare, from diversity to religion. We live in a society conducive to free expression and social change.

But you can’t change anything if all you’re talking about is how much you love Chipotle.

Sincerely,