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A Step-By-Step Guide To Writing More Effective Hate Mail To Some Random Writer On The Internet

You don't have to be Hemingway to get a writer to read your hate mail, but you do need to go through it at least a few times and fix the more blatant grammatical travesties.

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man angry frustrated at computerShould you ever write something that a fair number of people read, or say anything out loud to an audience of more than 10 people, somebody will be upset by your words. During the past 10 years, people have increasingly come to believe that every random stranger owes them a duty of inoffensiveness. Hate mail as well as rude comments abound.

Why, I’ve received hundreds of pieces of hate mail over the years. You get used to it, and the positive comments almost always outnumber the negative ones. In any case, a statement so bland that it has no potential to offend anyone anywhere is not really worth saying in the first place.

But I almost feel bad for some of these composers of angry emails. Nowadays when I get hate mail (it’s usually apparent from the ungrammatical subject line) I simply delete it. It’s not worth my time.

Some people put a lot of tragically misguided effort into their hate mail. It’s almost a shame for it to go to waste.

So, as a public service I’m providing a short, step-by-step guide to writing better hate mail. Follow the system, and you’re almost certain to have more success with your quest to strike back at some random person who you’ve never met who said something you don’t like.

Step 1: Reconsider

This seems obvious, but before you hit that send button, or even start writing a tirade, just stop for a moment and think about what you want to accomplish. If it is to upset the person whose words upset you, you’d better follow the rest of this guide closely, or your hate mail is going right into the Outlook trash bin, unread.

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Maybe, though, your goal is something else entirely. If it is just to let off some steam, there’s the old write-the-letter-then-don’t-send-it trick. Or you could send it to a friend or family member who might share your views, then the two of you can commiserate about this awful caricature you’ve imagined of a stranger on the internet.

The first step is important, and I cannot emphasize this enough because you have nothing to gain and potentially a lot to lose by pissing off a random writer on the internet. This is not a Starbucks: no one is going to kiss your ass trying to “make it right” when you raise a complaint. The person who spent a ton of time researching and writing about a particular topic also is not going to completely change his or her mind simply because of a poorly constructed email from some uninformed buffoon (that’s you). If your email gets read at all, the recipient is probably going to be laughing at the substandard quality of your writing.

At best, you get nothing out of sending hate mail. At worst, if you really get graphic, you get charged with a crime. Even shy of criminal content, perhaps the target of your ire writes something about the horrible message you sent them using your real name and then that’s the first thing that comes up whenever someone Googles you for the rest of your life. Don’t go off half-cocked when it comes to hate mail.

Step 2: Compliment Sandwich

OK, if you really cannot be convinced not to send hate mail at all, you might as well ensure your hate mail actually gets read. Again, remember that as soon as the recipient can tell a piece of hate mail was written by a person whose pulse was above 100 beats per minutes, it gets deleted.

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That being said, I’ve received a few thoughtful criticisms via email. Those get read, and occasionally even acted upon.

Disguise your hatred within a protective covering of compliments. An old trick from my days teaching first-year legal writing, where it is imperative to soften the psychological blow of necessary criticism, is the compliment sandwich. Stuff every negative thing you say between two delicious, supple buns of positive things (and keep anything negative out of the subject line and the first paragraph entirely).

Writers are vain, and susceptible to flattery. Use that.

Step 3: Research

You probably don’t know as much as you think you know about whatever it is that you’re complaining about. Generally people who write for pay have years of background knowledge about the subjects they write about, and then they put additional hours, if not days, of research into any given article.

I’m sure you have an area of expertise. Imagine someone who knows nothing about your area of expertise pretending like they have more experience than you at it. It’s painfully obvious, right?

Do a little extra background reading, even — especially — if you think you already know a lot about the topic. You don’t want to come off as a fool or a know-it-all, and you might even learn something new. If unfamiliar terms or concepts come up while you are composing your response, look them up. “Reading” is an important word here, because for our purposes it is not “research” if you are getting it from social media or from watching a video.

You might also want to Google the writer themself. Your assumptions about this person are, at this point, based solely on emotion and are probably wrong. For example, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called an “ambulance chaser” in hate mail, which doesn’t hurt my feelings or make me feel anything at all other than a suspicion that the writer is dumb and knows nothing about the legal system because I’ve never been involved in a personal injury case. At least get your insults right.

Step 4: Edit

When you send hate mail to some random writer on the internet, you are writing to a person who is paid to write. Writing professionally is a bit like professional sports: it takes years and years to get any good, if you’re getting paid for it you are way, way better than amateurs, and there are thousands of people in the minor leagues willing and eager to take your place.

It is difficult for someone who is paid to write to take seriously anything that is very poorly written. Imagine an MLB pitcher being expected to take pointers from a fan who can’t even lob the ball over home plate.

You don’t have to be Hemingway to get a writer to read your hate mail, but you do need to go through it at least a few times and fix the more blatant grammatical travesties. Read your hate mail out loud — does it sound correct when you hear it out loud as opposed to reading it in your head? It’s also a good idea to have a confidant take a quick look, both to correct the errors you might have missed and to give you an outside perspective on how unreasonable you are being.

In the editing stage, unless you are paid to write yourself — and I don’t mean like you’re an office manager who sometimes writes emails at work, I mean you are paid solely because other people are finding and reading stuff that you write — edit out all criticisms of the writing itself. Go ahead, criticize opinions expressed by a writer, that’s fair game, but receiving an email which criticizes the writing itself from someone who, based on the content of the email, obviously is a far worse writer than you just makes you feel pity.

Step 5: Offer Follow-up

This step is like the gold standard of effective hate mail. That being the case, you almost never see it in the wild.

If you correctly completed the previous steps, the final step will fall right into place. It’s all about what you actually want to accomplish with this hate mail. Should you wish to change this writer’s mind, for instance, ask to set up a phone call or Zoom session to talk things over more thoroughly. Or suggest that the recipient check out the written work of an expert you encountered during your research.

Requesting an emailed response is fine too, although that is the bare minimum on this step and will come off as sort of lazy. Since the vast majority of hate mailers shoot off barely cogent garbage and then slink away into the shadows, offering to further discuss the matter live via the telephone or videoconferencing will really set you apart from the crowd.

Following these five steps will make your hate mail dramatically more powerful. Now get out there, internet warrior, and level up your hate mail game.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].

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