What Does “O’Leary-ous” mean?
O’Leary-ous was originally a term invented by Robin Dearest’s friend on December 28th, 2001. It was in response to a critic’s review of DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE. “Matt O’Leary is the latest of a rare breed. He is a genuine artist of his craft. When he becomes a little more well known, all future outstanding performances by any child actor will be described as “O’Leary-ous”.”
Robin loved the term so much that she eventually adopted it as the name of her fan site, though the exact date of the name change is unknown.
On June 21st, 2006, “O’Leary-ous” was added to Urban Dictionary to mean an “adjective used to describe an extremely devoted fan of the young actor, Matt O’Leary.”
Today, Robin likes to think “O’Leary-ous” means whatever the fans need it to mean. From a way to describe a great performance to an act of fandom, you all make O’Leary-ous what it is.
What is O’Leary-ous the website?
A fan site devoted to Mr. Matt O’Leary that has been in existence for 10 years. Wow! You can also find O’Leary-ous on Facebook and Twitter for the most up to date information on all things Matt. There is now even a YouTube channel so fans can find videos involving Matt in one place. There used to be a Myspace group, but let’s face it, no one uses Myspace anymore.
How did O’Leary-ous come into existence?
It has been a long process to get the site to this point. The first incarnation began October 19th, 2001 with “The Best Matthew O’Leary Club” on Yahoo. This was a few months before Yahoo changed their clubs to groups. It was here that it all began. It saddens Robin Dearest to report, due to spamming and lack of interest, the Yahoo group was deactivated in 2009.
On April 25th, 2002, the first actual website was launched on Geocities unoriginally titled “Robin’s Matt O’Leary Fan Site”. It is from this site that all future O’Leary-ous sites will emerge. In the summer of 2004, with the help of new design software, the site changed hosting to Tripod, where it stayed till 2008. Remnants of this site still exists.
Eventually, Robin Dearest mastered simple HTML coding and started designing the site by hand. This opened up the opportunity for special effects and better design. O’Leary-ous moved back to its original home on Geocities, since it allowed for code use. It stayed there until Geocities discontinued their free hosting services in fall 2009.
No longer able to rely on free web hosting companies, Robin Dearest was forced to officially buy the O’Leary-ous domain. Finally, olearyous.com was born! But this would be short lived. Due to a number of circumstances (lack of money, lack of time, lack of interest from fans, etc…), the O’Leary-ous domain was not renewed for a second year, leaving only the Facebook fan page as of August 2010.
The demand for O’Leary-ous to return was outstanding, so in the Spring of 2011, Robin Dearest started the long process again. She was determined to make the wait worth it and to make O’Leary-ous’ ten year anniversary its best ever! The result is this new site. Hopefully, she succeeded :)
