#dancingmanfound

A Twitter hunt sparked an international movement against fat shaming and cyberbullying.

Confetti falls from the ceiling as smoke envelops the dance floor. From behind his DJ booth, Moby waves his arms in the air as if he’s conducting an orchestra. The crowd sways to his pulsing disco beats and deep bass lines. “Keep it moving ’cause you gotta be strong,” the song goes. “It won’t be long ’cause life goes on.” Cocktail servers carry glow-in-the-dark bottles of Grey Goose, scantily clad dancers parade around on stilts, and hordes of paparazzi are snapping photos.

Yet this isn’t your typical nightclub scene. The dance floor is packed with people who, on any other Saturday night at Hollywood’s Avalon, might be denied admission by a bouncer who determines they’re not hot or famous enough. But these are celebrities of a new breed, their names on the invite-only guest list: There’s Jennifer Adams, the paraplegic who was crowned Miss Wheelchair America 2014; Whitney Way Thore, the plus-size star of the TLC reality show My Big Fat Fabulous Life; Damienne Merlina, the one-armed comedian whose videotaped response to a fat-shaming bully recently went viral; Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern who turned her humiliation into a moving TED Talk about cyberbullying; and Matt Diaz, the 22-year-old New Yorker who became Internet famous last month when he posted a video displaying the stretched-out skin that resulted from shedding 270 pounds from his average-size frame.

Formerly cast as outsiders and pariahs, all of them have one thing in common: They’ve transformed their insecurities into empowerment, reinventing themselves as role models for a growing movement that trumpets positivity and acceptance in the face of shaming and embarrassment.  

But even the biggest names are upstaged tonight at the Avalon by a man who was completely unknown 11 weeks ago, without so much as a Facebook profile or a Twitter account. Today, he boasts more than 84,000 Twitter followers—just short of Lewinsky’s roughly 93,000. Like many viral phenomena, Sean O’Brien is better known by a catchphrase: Dancing Man.

The name flashes on floor-to-ceiling LED screens. It’s plastered on T-shirts and printed across the back of O’Brien’s white baseball jersey, a gift from the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have invited him to throw the first pitch at their game tomorrow. Wearing a glow stick atop his bald head like a neon halo, Dancing Man swigs a can of beer while a harem of young, beautiful women shower him with hugs, kisses, and selfies.

Shaking his hips and flashing a toothy, giddy grin, he looks as if he’s still not sure whether he dreamed it all up: the corporate sponsorships, the celebrity supporters, the phalanx of international TV reporters who won’t stop shining lights in his face. Dancing Man is living the new American dream—becoming famous for doing nothing—except he’s from London, and though technically this is someone else’s dream, he seems elated to have been cast as the lead.