A few months ago while scrolling through my timeline, I came across an account titled, "So Sad Today." Right away I was in intrigued and went to the account to check out some more tweets and was instantly enthralled. These anonymous tweets perfectly captured the anxiety and trepidation felt by so many young people today.
It turned out this account had not only caught my eye as I began seeing it quite frequently, though it is a certain brand of dark humor it soon began gaining retweets from celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Emma Roberts and Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, among others. It soon became one of the most popular accounts on twitter with 323.3k followers. As the buzz around So Sad Today continued to grow people wanted to know who the angsty teen behind the screen was. Soon enough the author of the cynical tweets revealed herself- to much surprise- as middle aged Melissa Broder, though Broder has said she still feels like a teenager. Melissa Broder currently resides in Venice, California and had been running the account since 2012 while working as the Director of Media & Special Projects at NewHive.
Along with taking her off "mask" so to say, she also announced that’d she be releasing a collection of personal essays under the same name which has since been released. This was not her first published work or even her second, she had four previously released poetry collections but none of them created a buzz quite like "So Sad Today" has. The utter realness and rawness of her tweets and essays work to paint a portrait of what so many people, especially young people are feeling today. Angst, off-putting romantic/sexual interactions and generally neurotic behavior are just the beginning of what she touches on. But it isn’t just what she’s saying, it’s how she says it that makes it so relatable. You know those thoughts that you just can’t seem to find words for? Melissa Broder has found those words for you.
Though she tries to tackle negative issues in a humorous way, she still understands the severity of these issues as she is someone who struggles with depression, anxiety and in the past, substance abuse, herself. On her website, she provides a list of resources including and what I think is her best advice, “be f*cking honest.” In a time where mental health is a bigger issue for more than people than ever, it’s truly a breath of fresh air to have someone who isn’t afraid to talk about it and offer support to others. Broder has gained attention from publications such as Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair just to name a few and continues to make a taboo subject a little bit easier to talk about.
