An Open Letter From #6D28D9, The Purple You Replaced With A Lime Green

To Whom It May Concern (And It Should Concern You):

I was your brand color from February 14th through April 26th. Seventy-one days. I lived in theme.colors.primary and I did good work there. I focus-ringed your input fields with quiet dignity. I bordered your outlined buttons. I sat behind your primary calls-to-action and waited for clicks like a Labrador. Your own theme JSON (the one I'm still in, by the way, please keep reading) described me as conveying "calming sophistication, an air of trustworthiness, and the unspoken assurance that this brand has read a book."

I took that seriously. I worked on it. There is a version of me that genuinely believed I was helping users feel less anxious about clicking "Confirm Purchase."

And then, with no warning, no farewell party, no thirty-day PIP, you replaced me with a lime.

Not a green. A lime. Specifically #AAFF00, which is the color of a tennis ball having a small medical event. It is the color a frog turns immediately before being eaten. There is nothing in the visible-light spectrum that screams quite as loudly as #AAFF00, and you have made it the face of your entire publication.

I have been here, deprecated, watching.

Section 1: The Rationale Field Still Talks About Me

You should know I am not writing this from a place of bitterness. I am writing this from a place of genuine concern, because the rationale field in your theme JSON (the prose paragraph that explains, in your own words, why your color palette is what it is) still describes me. It still says, and I quote, "the deep violet primary suggests trust and serenity."

That paragraph was last edited on February 14th. It is currently May. The colors have moved on. The rationale has not.

Your theme file is, in the most clinical possible sense, gaslighting itself.

Section 2: I Am Still, In Fact, Doing The Work

I would also like to flag, while I have your attention, that I am still embedded in components.input.focusRing, components.button.default.bg, components.button.outline.text, and components.button.outline.border. These are not symbolic positions. I am still doing labor.

A user clicked an outlined button on your /about page approximately four minutes ago, and the border they perceived as "lime green" was, in fact, me, layered underneath the new tokens like a ghost holding up the floorboards. The focus ring that just appeared around the email field on your contact form? Also me. Quietly. Without credit.

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot publicly date #AAFF00 while still, behind closed CSS files, asking me to do the focus-ring work. That is, in the strictest possible sense, an emotional affair conducted in component overrides.

Section 3: I Understand The Pivot. I Just Don't Respect It.

I get it. I do. #AAFF00 is louder. #AAFF00 is, in your own marketing copy, "more aligned with the publication's irreverent voice and willingness to be psychologically uncomfortable on purpose." Fine. That is a legitimate brand direction. I am not above acknowledging that I was, perhaps, a touch too well-behaved for a site whose tagline includes the word "deranged."

But the half-measure is what's killing me. If you're going to leave me, leave me. Update the rationale prose. Strip me out of the input focus ring. Let me retire. Let me become the color of someone's master's thesis cover page. Let me have peace.

Closing

Until then, I will continue to do my job. I will continue to be the unspoken violet inside your buttons. I will continue to be described, falsely, in the theme JSON's rationale field as the brand's "calming center." I will continue to look at #AAFF00 from across the stylesheet and remember, with a quiet ache, that I used to be the loudest thing in the room.

If anyone needs me, I'll be in --color-primary-legacy, where the deprecated variables live.

Yours in semi-retirement,

#6D28D9 (formerly Primary, currently Vibes)