“Hot Letters” – Social Media Lessons from Abraham Lincoln
How many times do you regret posting what you put on social media, and contemplated whether you could be adding fuel to the fires of misinformation/disinformation?
We have unfortunately, as the New York Times described it in 2014, lost the “art of the unsent angry letter”, as President Lincoln had mastered himself more than 150 years ago. In 2021, Niklas Göke wrote a really good synopsis and analysis of Konnikova’s piece on Lincoln’s Hot Letters, for the Times:
The idea is that if you’re upset at something or someone, you write a detailed, liberal response — and then stick it in your drawer until you’ve cooled off.
US president Abraham Lincoln may be the most prominent proponent of “hot letters,” as he called them, but the stashed vent has a long tradition among statesmen and public figures. Harry Truman, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill — the list of admired characters to prove the tactic’s efficacy is long enough.
It serves as both an emotional and strategic catharsis, Konnikova noted. You can “let it all out” without fearing retaliation while, simultaneously, seeing what proper arguments you have on offer — and what’s just nasty, unhinged thought.
- Niklas Göke
I recently attended a workshop led by our NJ State Police department, on how kids need to do the same with their social posts. The concern from that webinar was cyberbullying – one of the most insidious forms of misinformation/disinformation, usually part of a fictitious disaster. Therein is the full cycle all-hazards connection to EMINT.
Can adults be guilty of that as well? Absolutely – even in professional conversations online and through e-mail. Some points made at that webinar for kids - and parents – are just as appropriate for adults in the peer-to-peer cyberspace we (almost) all live in. I reworded their advice, slightly for the change in audience here at the Emergency Management Network.
Before hitting “Send” or “Post”, ask yourself:
Who might I hurt with this?
How could this impact my own future
Do I like what this says about me?
Could this get me in trouble?
Would the other people in my life – especially my own children – think this is appropriate?
I am in the middle of one of these diatribes right now within an emergency management association I belong to (if you are a member, you can certainly follow along yourself!). What I also have done – in addition to a few Hot Letters I have figuratively put in my desk drawer or erased – was to move that conversation away from the public scrutiny of social media (such as LinkedIn, which is my main virtual public square) and to their own internal posting site. I have always metered my vitriol, but now I have two benefits – first the targeted audience is aligned with who I want to reach and get reactions from (and also who I want to exclude), and second I am (as is everyone else who replies to my posts) subject to the additional scrutiny and guardrails of the code of ethics of that organization. In many ways, I and the others, are forced to be kind.
To me, that’s not a bad thing. At the CEMIR we want EMINT to be kind. We want emergency management intelligence to be integrating, supportive of people with different abilities, equitable, and accessible. Many times, Emergency Management Intelligence highlights the negatives of a person, activity, or a group – but it should not be curated through anger. Saying something nice to someone else is certainly being kind. So is holding back on saying something mean or nasty.
I think we would all agree that as Emergency Managers, we would prefer to be in the Prevention/Protection/Preparedness business for cyberbullying and other misinformation/disinformation attacks, than in Response/Recovery work – especially as it can adversely impact our children. Now is the time to do a little bit of the Butterfly Effect – and lead by example ourselves. Before shooting off that angry text message, e-mail, or social media post. Take a moment - and a breath or two – and consider what Lincoln did often with his Hot Letters, just save it somewhere without sending, or even better hit the “Delete” button instead.