Sean O’Brien was just a Brit who wanted to dance.
It was 2015, and he was enjoying a night at a club in Los Angeles when someone photographed him without his permission. The image ended up on 4chan accompanied by a cruel comment mocking his weight, claiming that he had stopped dancing as soon as he noticed people were laughing at him. Thousands of people shared that photo just to humiliate him, without even knowing his name.
What no one anticipated was the response. A campaign called #FindDancingMan went viral in the opposite direction: instead of joining in the mockery, the world set out to find him and defend him. They found him, raised money to bring him from the United Kingdom to Los Angeles, and organized a party with more than 200 guests, a message from Pharrell Williams, and a dance with Meghan Trainor right in Rockefeller Plaza.
Sean later said that the experience taught him to focus on the good people. A single act of anonymous cruelty was ultimately overshadowed by thousands of people who chose the opposite.
