Dear Hacker: Letters to the Editor of 2600

Chapter 9. Strange Ramblings

Our final chapter is devoted to one of our more popular types of letter: the kind that really defies easy description. When you have so many people writing in for so many different reasons, you're occasionally going to get those letters that seem a little...off. Those are the ones that attract a good amount of attention because none of us really knows where they're going or what they're going to say next.

It's interesting that we didn't really start getting these sorts of contributions until a few years into our publication. I suppose this is what happens when the audience begins to grow. It especially takes off when the magazine in question develops a reputation for printing a ton of letters from the readers. People literally write in sometimes just to see their names printed. That means the actual letter becomes incidental to what we're all about, and oftentimes hilarious in its disconnection.

Rather than ignore this slice of our contributors, we decided quite early on to embrace it. If nothing else, printing such letters serves as a reminder to all of us not to take things too seriously. Humor has always played a significant role in everything we do and I think that's part of the magic that has allowed us to continue doing what we do for so long. But we've walked a fine line with this because we never wanted to ridicule someone who may have been inexperienced or simply confused in how they expressed themselves. So we saved the truly harsh responses ...