Disclaimer: this is aimed at Odyssey's marketing team, not the people who write for the platform.
To the honeys at Odyssey HQ,
I know an attention-hungry machine when I see one.
As a person living in the 21st century, I've had far more experience with being attention-hungry than I'd like. I'm sure anyone reading my words will agree. Through social media like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, I'm sure we have all had a yearning for more likes, retweets or comments and experienced a temporary, yet addicting taste of triumph when we were more successful than we were previously. The taste of hitting triple-digit likes for the first time can be very sweet indeed, so sweet that some have grown addicted. I'm sure we can all name a friend who spends nearly their entire life on their phone.
Regardless, I can recognize an attention-hungry machine on sight because I used to be one.
It was on Wattpad, a fiction-based writing platform known for badly-written smut and fanfiction. I became tangled up with the original fiction section of the platform, where I became more or less obsessed with getting reads, votes and comments. Eventually, the longer I stayed, the more I came to realize that many of those who were successful on that site were people who had no life outside the orange app. Around that time, I realized that I didn't want to get tied to the little orange app. So I escaped. The end.
But I know the tendencies of an online attention-hungry machine.
When I first joined Odyssey, it was because I figured that writing "internship" on my resume would sound pretty rad. I took the weekly article submissions as a chance to improve and experiment with my writing.
In that sense, Odyssey has always been excellent.
My community is the kindest. The people are amazing ,and I praise the unofficial mother hen, the editor-in-chief, on a regular basis because she's so lovely, understanding and accommodating. She and everyone else in it are the ones that make my experience so lovely and worthwhile. They are the ones who teach me how to improve my writing, and they are the people I have learned to cherish. I wouldn't trade them for the world.
But with the introduction of the viral article "You May Have Worn The Prom Dress With Him, But I Get To Wear The Wedding Dress" and the events immediately following, came a rude awakening. Exactly what the article features is debatable, as people seem to have gained all sorts of differing perspectives, ranging from "psycho" to "sweet." Regardless, what's important about this article can be summarized in four words: it has gone viral.
As I'm writing this, it is nearing half a million reads, which is almost unheard of on your platform, a rather obscure platform of self-published writers.
But mostly, the article in question has sparked nationwide outrage for the author, citing the insanity of women, and pity for the ex and the author's fiance. The woman who wrote the article is dealing with vicious, hateful attacks publicized on many well-known platforms like Washington Post, Huffington Post and AU News. The author, fiance and the ex-girlfriend mentioned are all dealing with unsolicited overly-personal questions and online stalkers.
Never mind the poor people who are all dealing with the force of going viral on the internet.
Never mind that they are dealing with negative effects from that article that will unfortunately haunt them for the rest of their lives.
With this in mind, what do you try and do about the whole situation?
You, in conjunction with with American Apparel, have come out with a new design of t-shirts.
You are clearly milking this situation, obviously going with the well-known tactic that "any press is good press." It's bad enough that people are getting hate. But the fact that you're not even going to empathize or pretend put a blind eye to the entire fiasco, and instead use it as a chance to generate some extra revenue for yourselves, is absolutely appalling.
The creators in my community are upset, to say the least, about how your action will reflect on the writers and the communities of Odyssey. They're right — you've made us all look like cheap writers, flocking merrily for the chance to get more views. Frankly, however, I think you've shot yourselves in the foot.
In your venture to make yourself some profit out of the pain of one of your writers, you have revealed to the rest of us on who you are. A plethora of Odyssey writers and communities have realized that you are nothing but an attention-hungry machine, striving on the sweat of Odyssey creators that write for your platform to get you more views. You have shown the rest of the Odyssey that you are willing to sacrifice morality in the face of profit and views.
Even after you realize your mistake in selling the shirts and milking the situation, you must know that the internet never forgets. Though you might run a platform of hardworking creators, editors and social media directors, we will never forget what you did to this poor writer in the face of her catastrophe and what you will do to take advantage of the rest of us.
