: Why aren't literary magazines more honest in their rejections Many literary magazines routinely send out form rejections with the following types of statements: Thanks very much, bla bla… Unfortunately,

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I understand that most people don't like being called out, nevertheless I was slightly surprised to see such hostility by supposed 'professionals' to such a fair and comprehensible question, and equally surprised to see the rather obvious tactics used in attempting to shut down the question; by pretending it is not understandable or that it "starts a discussion" (as if virtually all questions don't intrinsically do that). I really expected more mature behavior. So I will attempt to provide an answer myself.
First of all, I should make it clear that, in my discussions with people outside of this forum, many have confirmed that magazines DO indeed regularly write what they know to be falsehoods or misleading statements in their rejection forms. They refer to them as "white lies".
I was rather disappointed because I expected the response to the question to be something along the lines of:
"The premise that most stories sent to us are 'terrible', as you heard from the slush readers you spoke about, is not actually correct. The majority of stories we receive are actually of adequate standard but are nevertheless rejected out of subjective preference rather than glaringly poor quality. Therefore, the form letters are not actually dishonest since other magazines COULD indeed accept them. But for stories that ARE glaringly horrible such that no literary magazine could possibly accept them (the kinds of stories that those slush readers gave you the impression that they usually receive) we usually use a different, more concise rejection form; something along the lines of 'Thanks. But this story is not for us.'"
This is what I expected the response to be like. Thus, I was quite disappointed to instead receive either emotional hostility without any rational explanation, or an actual admission of dishonesty.
Nevertheless, my intuition would still be that MOST of the stories that are sent to these magazines are NOT actually 'terrible', as claimed by those slush readers I read, but that they were merely exaggerating and imposing their own subjective reactions on stories that were actually of standard quality. And it may be that the people who have responded to the question, in other places, by admitting to regular dishonesty simply did not properly understand the question and failed to see that I was talking about stories that are of poor quality by anyone's standards.
But if it is indeed the case that these kinds of form rejections are being sent to truly horribly written stories (by any standard), then it would mean that there is widespread dishonesty. As to why it happens, despite the fact that, like I pointed out, there are neutral ways of writing such rejection forms that do not involve dishonesty, I think it really would come down to simple carelessness and lack of imagination on the part of most editors. After all, editors are human and make mistakes and can be careless and inconsiderate. I suppose for most people it simply takes extra effort to compose more proper and honest forms and thus they simply did not bother. And once a certain type of rejection form has been used frequently as a result, it eventually becomes the norm because everyone simply copies it without giving it much thought.

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There is nobody who would write an obviously poor quality story and then throw a tantrum when kindly told that it isn’t perfect.

This is incorrect for two reasons. First, people who write stories don't necessarily know if they are poor quality, and second, because many --perhaps most-- writers are emotionally involved with their stories. I myself have thrown tantrums on multiple occasions when receiving good, valuable, and kindly meant criticisms on stories I have written.

it seems dishonest and irresponsible that they would be sending form rejections with such obvious falsehoods.

These aren't actually obvious falsehoods. Writing IS subjective. Editors have made big mistakes before. Famous books have gone through multiple rounds of rejection before being accepted. Something which seems terrible to someone who doesn't appreciate its style or genre might be acclaimed as genius by someone else. It might not be likely, but it's possible. It's also quite possible, and considerably more likely, that a well-written piece might not be right for the current needs of a given magazine.

If the purpose is to be ‘kind’ to the rejected author, it seems to me that there are obvious alternative ways of writing (genuinely) kind and helpful rejection forms without lying to the novice authors or misleading them.

First --it isn't the magazine's job, or a part of it, to provide feedback. That's not what they're there for. Any time spent on evaluating submissions beyond the binary question of "right for us / wrong for us" is time wasted for them. Second, it's difficult to think of any response that wouldn't anger someone. For instance, consider your first replacement response. What if you had twenty years writing experience, and you had extensively workshopped your piece, and you got that response. Wouldn't that anger and frustrate you? It's making assumptions --potentially unwarranted --about who you are as a person and as a writer. And, as @Jedediah mentioned in the comments, angry people are potentially violent people. Something that distinguishes you from the crowd might end up being the thing they latch onto to focus their anger around. Or, conversely, the shorter, neutral dismissal might anger other people, and for other reasons. No one likes rejection, so there's really no winning here.

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