You’ve probably seen the stories—people using social media to track down a biological parent, or share a random act of kindness that goes viral.
Two Los Angeles women used Twitter to track down a man who was ruthlessly body-shamed for dancing in public.
A crude meme of a man named Sean O’Brien was making the rounds on the Internet when writer Cassandra Fairbanks first caught wind of it.
It showed two side-by-side images of the heavy-set man, first proudly dancing, then visibly saddened. The meme went completely viral after being posted under the caption, “Spotted this specimen trying to dance the other week. He stopped when he saw us laughing.”
Twitter
Like thousands before her, Cassandra retweeted the photo, but she wasn’t interested in making fun of the man. Instead she wanted to lift him up.
There was just one problem: Nobody knew who the man was.
Twitter
“Anyone know this man or who posted this? There’s a huge group of ladies in LA who would like to do something special.”
3,500 people retweeted her post, which quickly led to a formal invitation for the “Dancing Man” to join a large group of ladies for a massive dance party in L.A.
Twitter
The invitation read:
“Dancing Man,
We don’t know much about you, but a photo on the internet suggested that you wanted to dance, and were made to feel like you shouldn’t be.
We want to see you dance freely and if you would have us, we would love to dance with you.
We are prepared to throw quite the dance party just for you, if you’d have us.
To be clear, it’s 1,727 of us. And we are all women.
If this isn’t appealing, we’re ok with taking no for an answer, but we’d like you to know—the offer stands.
May we have this dance?
-Sincerely,
An occasionally overly enthusiastic group of young women in California. #finddancingman”
The post garnered widespread attention and rapidly turned into a Twitter campaign under the hashtag #FindDancingMan in an attempt to locate Sean O’Brien.
Celebrities like Pharrell Williams and Monica Lewinsky were excited to join, and the Internet got to work turning “Dancing Man” into an Internet sensation for all the right reasons.
Twitter
Their efforts paid off, and Dancing Man was finally connected with Cassandra on Twitter.
Twitter
DJ Moby offered his spinster services for free, and almost everything for the massive dance party was completely donated, including Sean’s airplane ticket from Liverpool, England.
Some of Hollywood’s finest came out for the event, and the party raised more than $70,000 for anti-bullying charities and positive-body-image programs in the U.S. and the U.K.
Thanks to the power of social media, people all over the world had a hand in taking a mean-hearted situation, and using it for good.
