How Melodramatic․com helped me discover neighborhood on the early web

In 2004, I used to be an undiagnosed neurodivergent teenager who had given up on attempting to slot in. It felt like everybody was attempting to mould me into their model of good by chastising me once I did one thing “incorrect.” It was complicated, exhausting, and demoralizing. I managed to make just a few mates in highschool who appeared to simply get me, however the very last thing I needed to do was speak about how I felt — till all my mates began signing up for running a blog accounts on Melodramatic.com.

Shielded by the anonymity of a display identify, it was the primary time I felt secure speaking about my psychological well being — and found there have been so many different youngsters like me who felt the identical method. Even all these years later, when you search “Melodramatic.com” on Reddit, you’ll nonetheless discover individuals reminiscing about it from time to time, some retelling the story of how they met their partner on the positioning or how they actually wouldn’t be alive right this moment if it wasn’t for with the ability to share their ache with others in a Melo weblog.

Most individuals have by no means heard of Melodramatic.com. It was such a distinct segment web site that it doesn’t also have a Wikipedia web page. Most of Melo’s lively person base — which peaked round 300,000 “Melo youngsters,” as we known as ourselves — was in components of Orange County and the Inland Empire in Southern California. “We had been massive in Guam, too,” the positioning’s creator, Sara Robertson, tells me. 

Robertson coded and maintained the positioning virtually totally on her personal. She was a child when she began coding within the late ’80s, self-taught on a Commodore 64 and a e book on BASIC that had been Christmas presents from her grandmother. Then, it was on to coding for BBS communities within the ’90s, which set her as much as create a private weblog that might ultimately turn out to be Melodramatic.com.

“I used to be 18 years outdated when my finest buddy died. I needed to write about it,” says Robertson. However within the late ’90s and into the mid-2000s, there actually weren’t locations on-line the place somebody coping with an immense quantity of grief might specific themselves or discover assist from a neighborhood of individuals. “Nothing existed on the time that crammed that void,” she explains. “Nothing that linked me with individuals who felt the identical shit and made it secure for me to speak about my shit in a judgment-free zone.”

Melo launched years earlier than Myspace, Reddit, and Tumblr and across the identical time as Blogger, LiveJournal, and Open Diary. Blogs did exist within the late ’90s, however most had been individually created by programmers like Robertson and normally didn’t have a remark part. However Robertson needed to attach with different individuals, so she added one to her weblog. Virtually instantly, her posts began filling up with replies.

“Folks would say, ‘My buddy died, too, and right here’s the story of how that occurred,’” says Robertson. However they weren’t simply strangers providing drive-by sympathies. Over a brief time frame, Robertson and the others grew to become a close-knit neighborhood — the precise type of on-line house she couldn’t discover earlier than she began running a blog. One in all her mates seen the potential for it to show into one thing higher, to offer extra individuals their very own house to specific their truest, unfiltered feelings. They satisfied her so as to add a chatroom (a message board system known as The Wall) onto her web site and let individuals create their very own accounts.

To start with, “no one joined to say good shit,” Robertson says. A web site named Melodramatic.com units a particular tone, so emotionally loaded subjects had been the norm. However as Roberston explains, “When you’re your genuine self, it tends to draw different genuine individuals, and it builds communities.”

By the point I signed up for a Melo account, Robertson had already remodeled the web site once more, from a chatroom to a full-fledged social community with prime 10 lists and a complete social reward system. The Wall was nonetheless round, nevertheless it felt extra like an additional characteristic of the positioning. More often than not, the one individuals nonetheless chatting in it had been the identical ones who discovered Robertson’s weblog years earlier. The primary web page had adopted a easy purple and black coloration scheme with boxed-in sections, like Information and High Members, that made it straightforward to navigate. 

Reddit could have made the karma system well-known, however Melodramatic.com had it earlier than Reddit even existed. Sure actions, like being the primary individual to depart a message on a brand new person’s guestbook, awarded completely different quantities of factors. “Folks would race to welcome the brand new customers, and that alone made it a special type of expertise,” Robertson explains. If you had been the primary individual to touch upon a person’s guestbook, which was known as their “g-spot,” you bought factors for being a “cherry popper.”

There have been just a few causes to top off on karma, too. Incomes “touches,” which was the identical as urgent a Like button on somebody’s submit or remark, was one in every of them. “Touches weren’t free on Melo,” Robertson says. “They had been based mostly in your karma, and also you solely had a specific amount that you might use day-after-day, which made them extra significant.” A “bang” price 10 touches.

This was all a shock to me once I first joined. You’re welcoming me? You’re completely happy I’m right here? The cognitive dissonance was surreal at first; complete strangers had been being good to me on-line. That kind of factor wasn’t one thing I’d skilled, as a lot as I can bear in mind, offline. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than I began doing the identical to different new customers, and after some time, I finished doing it for karma and did it as a result of it was a pleasant factor to do.

One other massive incentive was incomes sufficient karma to “unlock your colours,” or the power to vary the background and textual content colours in your profile. You can even change the Melodramatic.com brand on the prime of each web page. You couldn’t clog your profile with unreadable, stylized textual content and auto-play music like you might on Myspace, nevertheless it was sufficient to make your house mirror your character.

My Melo went via many coloration modifications in the course of the years I used to be lively on the platform, and since all it required was a little bit information of HTML, I used to be additionally ready so as to add a pop-up window with a customized message that greeted individuals any time they visited my web page. Different customers did the identical, some with humorous messages, however most I noticed had been heartfelt. Mine was a quote from Hellen Keller: “The very best and most stunning issues on the planet can’t be seen and even touched. They should be felt with the center.”

By the early 2010s, Robertson’s labor of affection had grown too widespread and too costly for her to proceed self-funding. All of the merch, fundraisers, and Elite subscriptions that provided customers extra options weren’t sufficient to pay the server payments. “I used to be gainfully employed and making good cash, however you’ll be able to’t carry a $2,500 a month interest for the remainder of your life,” she says.

She resorted to placing advertisements on the positioning to attempt to herald more cash, however they felt inappropriate subsequent to the type of issues individuals usually wrote about, like reducing themselves or considering suicide. It didn’t take lengthy for Roberston to take away advertisements totally. “Promoting wasn’t the fitting answer, however for a social platform, that’s your solely possibility,” she says.

Her server additionally couldn’t at all times deal with the person base because it grew. “I had 15 years of weblog submit feedback, billions of rows within the database,” she says. “It had gathered for therefore lengthy that it was unwieldy, and the know-how wasn’t actually there on the time.” The positioning would often crash, and Robertson would spend a pair days attempting to get it again up — till at some point, it went down, and she or he by no means introduced it again up. She informed herself that she’d “do it this weekend,” however the weekend become every week, then become two weeks, after which become years. Robertson says she by no means made a aware determination to close Melo down. It simply kind of occurred.

I ask Roberston, who now has her personal kids, if she has come throughout something like Melodramatic.com in recent times or if a spot prefer it might ever exist once more. She doesn’t suppose so. TikTok and Twitter (previous to Elon Musk’s possession) are locations the place she’s discovered comparable communities and energies, however recreating or discovering a distinct segment neighborhood like Melo on right this moment’s web is far, a lot tougher.

“I’ve to think about it from the angle of my youngsters,” says Roberston. The web is extra harmful right this moment — a content-hungry, money-driven, predatory type of house. Mega platforms like Fb, with their monetary incentives, usually are not in a spot to unravel it. “You possibly can’t monetize self-expression.”

As we speak’s web feels too massive and too public for one more Melodramatic.com to exist, and but it feels as important an thought as ever. Robertson factors out that everybody goes via identification challenges. It’s the character of being human. I agree. I wanted a spot that wasn’t a diary hiding below my mattress to trauma-dump the whole lot my teenage self was attempting to course of. I wanted a secure house, a judgment-free zone, and a spot that provided anonymity. Melodramatic.com gave me all three.

“It makes me completely happy to stroll down reminiscence lane and be reminded that there was a enjoyable world that I used to be part of,” Robertson tells me.

I inform her it makes me completely happy, too. I’m undecided I’d be right here right this moment with out Melo.