Team:Melee Hell
Melee Hell is a Facebook group, designed as a satirical response to the Melee Social Facebook group and Melee Social board on Smashboards. Created by Brookman on June 10th, 2014, Melee Hell's original group grew to contain 49,537 members, with some professional smashers like Hungrybox, Mew2King, Kage, and Hax taking part in the group.
The original group was archived on November 25th, 2020[1], with Brookman citing Facebook's "draconian" terms of service, involving a warning received by the platform for a meme posted by a member. However, a second group has since been made by Brookman and the other staff members on the same day, which has over 8,600 members and sees large levels of activity.
OverviewEdit
Posters on Melee Hell often reference farcical inside jokes, such as 20XX, posts about Melee's perceived quality compared to other games in the series, and satirical statements about other smashers. A large majority of posts also tend to be edited images or videos surrounding such in-jokes, as well as extensive references to internet memes. Members also jokingly ask "Where's the Melee?" if a post's content is unrelated to Melee.
In addition to Melee Hell, a variety of other parody groups related to other games in the series have appeared on Facebook, such as Smash 4 Hell (later renamed Smash Switch Hell) and Melee Heaven. Other groups unrelated to Smash Bros. have also been created with the "Hell" tag at the end of the name, e.g. "Initial D Hell", "Deus Ex Hell". This has since become somewhat ingrained into Facebook group cultures, with communities far outside Smash's influence adopting the term for "shitposting" groups.
ChuDat's sponsorshipEdit
Melee Hell was responsible for crowdfunding ChuDat's traveling costs for EVO 2015, as he had previously been dropped by his sponsor, Mortality eSports. Due to the "sponsorship", he entered the tournament as "MH | ChuDat" and wore a Melee Hell-designed shirt, as a parody of the uniforms generally worn by other sponsored smashers. ChuDat finished 7th at EVO 2015, and the event helped to spark further interest in Melee Hell.
Melee Hell TagEdit
Multiple smashers, such as Bones, have used "Melee Hell" as a clan name in tournaments. A large number of smashers also entered with the tag at Apex 2015, as to more easily organize a potential crew battle with members of Melee Social. Owing to the controversy over the group's existence, however, some tournament organizers have banned the use of the Melee Hell tag. To help alleviate issues with the community, some smashers instead use MH| instead of Melee Hell.
Notable playersEdit
ControversyEdit
Melee Hell has been controversial to some members of the Smash community, with criticism being focused at the often vulgar and obscene content of the page; some of the content has also been criticized for being racist or sexist, as well as promoting trolling. Melee Hell is also known — and sometimes criticised — for its "edgy" humour, including controversial content such as jokes pertaining to the 9/11 disaster. Some followers of Melee Hell have also sent threats to smashers outside of the group; however, admins for Melee Hell prohibit such threats.