In 2004, I was an unacunderstandledged neuroseparatent teenager who had given up on trying to fit in. It felt appreciate everyone was trying to mbetter me into their version of perfect by chastising me when I did someskinnyg “wrong.” It was confusing, exhausting, and demoralizing. I regulated to produce a scant frifinishs in high school who seemed to equitable get me, but the last skinnyg I wanted to do was talk about how I felt — until all my frifinishs commenceed signing up for blogging accounts on Meloemotional.com.
Shielded by the anonymity of a screen name, it was the first time I felt defended talking about my mental health — and uncovered there were so many other teenagers appreciate me who felt the same way. Even all these years tardyr, if you search “Meloemotional.com” on Reddit, you’ll still discover people reminiscing about it on occasion, some reinestablishing the story of how they met their spoengage on the site or how they literassociate would not be alive today if it wasn’t for being able to allot their pain with others in a Melo blog.
Most people have never heard of Meloemotional.com. It was such a niche site that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Most of Melo’s active engager base — which peaked around 300,000 “Melo kids,” as we called ourselves — was in parts of Orange County and the Inland Empire in Southern California. “We were huge in Guam, too,” the site’s creator, Sara Robertson, inestablishs me.
Robertson coded and upholded the site almost entidepend on her own. She was a kid when she commenceed coding in the tardy ’80s, self-taught on a Commodore 64 and a book on BASIC that were Christmas contransients from her magnificentmother. Then, it was on to coding for BBS communities in the ’90s, which set her up to produce a personal blog that would eventuassociate become Meloemotional.com.
“I was 18 years better when my best frifinish died. I had to produce about it,” says Robertson. But in the tardy ’90s and into the mid-2000s, there reassociate weren’t places online where someone dealing with an immense amount of grief could convey themselves or discover help from a community of people. “Noskinnyg existed at the time that filled that void,” she elucidates. “Noskinnyg that connected me with people who felt the same shit and made it defended for me to talk about my shit in a judgment-free zone.”
Melo started years before Myspace, Reddit, and Tumblr and around the same time as Blogger, LiveJournal, and Open Diary. Blogs did exist in the tardy ’90s, but most were individuassociate produced by programmers appreciate Robertson and usuassociate didn’t have a comment section. But Robertson wanted to connect with other people, so she inserted one to her blog. Almost instantly, her posts commenceed filling up with replies.
“People would say, ‘My frifinish died, too, and here’s the story of how that happened,’” says Robertson. But they weren’t equitable strangers adviseing drive-by sympathies. Over a unininestablishigentinutive period of time, Robertson and the others became a shut-knit community — the exact benevolent of online space she couldn’t discover before she commenceed blogging. One of her frifinishs watchd the potential for it to turn into someskinnyg wonderfuler, to give more people their own space to convey their genuinest, unfiltered emotions. They affectd her to insert a chatroom (a message board system called The Wall) onto her site and let people produce their own accounts.
In the commencening, “nobody combiinsist to say excellent shit,” Robertson says. A website named Meloemotional.com sets a definite tone, so emotionassociate loaded topics were the norm. But as Roberston elucidates, “When you are your genuine self, it tfinishs to draw other genuine people, and it produces communities.”
By the time I signed up for a Melo account, Robertson had already changeed the website aobtain, from a chatroom to a filled-fledged social netlabor with top 10 enumerates and an entire social reward system. The Wall was still around, but it felt more appreciate an extra feature of the site. Most of the time, the only people still chatting in it were the same ones who set up Robertson’s blog years earlier. The main page had adchooseed a basic purple and bconciseage color scheme with boxed-in sections, appreciate News and Top Members, that made it basic to steer.
Reddit may have made the karma system honord, but Meloemotional.com had it before Reddit even existed. Certain actions, appreciate being the first person to depart a message on a novel engager’s guestbook, awarded separateent amounts of points. “People would race to greet the novel engagers, and that alone made it a separateent benevolent of experience,” Robertson elucidates. When you were the first person to comment on a engager’s guestbook, which was called their “g-spot,” you got points for being a “cherry popper.”
There were a scant reasons to stock up on karma, too. Earning “touches,” which was the same as pressing a Like button on someone’s post or comment, was one of them. “Touches weren’t free on Melo,” Robertson says. “They were based on your karma, and you only had a certain amount that you could engage every day, which made them more unbenevolentingful.” A “bang” cost 10 touches.
This was all a shock to me when I first combiinsist. You’re welcoming me? You’re charmd I’m here? The cognitive dissonance was surauthentic at first; total strangers were being kind to me online. That sort of skinnyg wasn’t someskinnyg I’d sfinished, as much as I can recall, offline. It wasn’t extfinished before I commenceed doing the same to other novel engagers, and after a while, I stopped doing it for karma and did it becaengage it was a kind skinnyg to do.
Another huge incentive was geting enough karma to “unlock your colors,” or the ability to change the background and text colors on your profile. You could even change the Meloemotional.com logo at the top of every page. You couldn’t clog your profile with unreadable, stylized text and auto-take part music appreciate you could on Myspace, but it was enough to produce your space echo your personality.
My Melo went thraw many color changes during the years I was active on the platestablish, and since all it insistd was a little understandledge of HTML, I was also able to insert a pop-up thrivedow with a custom message that greeted people any time they visited my page. Other engagers did the same, some with comical messages, but most I saw were heartfelt. Mine was a quote from Hellen Keller: “The best and most drawive skinnygs in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”
By the timely 2010s, Robertson’s labor of adore had prolongn too famous and too costly for her to persist self-funding. All the merch, fundelevaters, and Elite subscriptions that adviseed engagers insertitional features weren’t enough to pay the server bills. “I was obtainfilledy engageed and making excellent money, but you can’t carry a $2,500 a month hobby for the rest of your life,” she says.
She resorted to putting ads on the site to try and convey in more money, but they felt inappropriate next to the benevolent of skinnygs people frequently wrote about, appreciate cutting themselves or contemplating self-mutilation. It didn’t apshow extfinished for Roberston to erase ads entidepend. “Advertising wasn’t the right solution, but for a social platestablish, that’s your only chooseion,” she says.
Her server also couldn’t always regulate the engager base as it grew. “I had 15 years of blog post comments, billions of rows in the database,” she says. “It had accumutardyd for so extfinished that it was unwieldy, and the technology wasn’t reassociate there at the time.” The site would occasionassociate crash, and Robertson would spfinish a couple days trying to get it back up — until one day, it went down, and she never brawt it back up. She tbetter herself that she’d “do it this weekfinish,” but the weekfinish turned into a week, then turned into two weeks, and then turned into years. Robertson says she never made a inestablished decision to shut Melo down. It equitable sort of happened.
I ask Roberston, who now has her own children, if she has come atraverse anyskinnyg appreciate Meloemotional.com in recent years or if a place appreciate it could ever exist aobtain. She doesn’t skinnyk so. TikTok and Twitter (prior to Elon Musk’s ownership) are places where she’s set up analogous communities and energies, but recreating or discovering a niche community appreciate Melo on today’s internet is much, much difficulter.
“I have to skinnyk of it from the perspective of my kids,” says Roberston. The internet is more hazardous today — a satisfied-hungry, money-driven, rapacious benevolent of space. Mega platestablishs appreciate Facebook, with their financial incentives, are not in a place to settle it. “You can’t monetize self-conveyion.”
Today’s internet experiences too huge and too accessible for another Meloemotional.com to exist, and yet it experiences as vital an idea as ever. Robertson points out that everyone goes thraw identity contests. It’s the nature of being human. I consent. I insisted a place that wasn’t a diary hiding under my mattress to trauma-dump everyskinnyg my teenage self was trying to process. I insisted a defended space, a judgment-free zone, and a place that adviseed anonymity. Meloemotional.com gave me all three.
“It produces me charmd to walk down memory lane and be reminded that there was a fun world that I was a part of,” Robertson inestablishs me.
I inestablish her it produces me charmd, too. I’m not stateive I’d be here today without Melo.
