The cover letter is enthusiasm theatre

The cover letter asks a person to perform a very specific fiction: that this role, of the forty they applied to this month because rent exists, is the one they have dreamed of since childhood. Both sides know it is a performance. The applicant knows, the recruiter who skims it in eight seconds knows, and still the ritual persists, a loyalty oath sworn to a company that will not reply.

What does the letter actually measure? The ability to produce earnest prose on demand, the free time to produce it forty times, and the willingness to keep performing enthusiasm into silence. Notice what that filter selects against: the employed person with twenty spare minutes, the carer applying at midnight, the person whose talents are in doing rather than narrating. Frequently the exact people worth hiring.

Generated enthusiasm, skimmed by machines

AI finished the argument. Enthusiasm prose now costs nothing to generate, so letters are machine-written, machine-skimmed, and read closely by no one. A signal that is free to produce is not a signal. The cover letter survives purely as friction, a small hazing that proves the applicant will tolerate hazing.

What replaces it

Interest, demonstrated rather than declared. On this platform the costly signal runs the other way: a company reads your published work and writes to you about it, specifically. And when you register interest in a role here, no essay is attached, because the register is not an audition. Your work already said the substantive thing. The only thing a letter could add is the performance, and we are fine without it.