Lady Rerun Vs. The Internet

Have you ever had a moment where you do something very simple without putting much thought into it, yet it ends up changing your life? That’s what happened to Portia “Lady Rerun” Allen, when she decided to enter two online contests.

Portia, who is the daughter of Fred “Rerun” Berry from the 1970’s sitcom, “What’s Happening!!” decided to follow in her father’s footsteps by becoming an entertainer. At 4’9 320 lbs, she is a plus sized model, radio & event host, and actress. She’s found that while her size does sometimes give people the wrong impression of her, she enjoys proving those same people wrong by showing a huge heart and spirit also exists inside of her large frame.

Having a father that was in the entertainment industry taught her early on that any publicity could be good publicity, that even negatives could be spun into positives. That being the case, Portia knows that her size can help her reach out to women of all shapes, sizes and races, because nearly all women face body image issues.

Because she is constantly grinding to reach the next level of success, Portia decided to enter Safe Auto’s DoTheJingle.com contest and she entered to be the spokeswoman for the Eyes Lips Face cosmetics line.
For the Safe Auto entry, Portia was lounging poolside as she talked about Safe Auto and sang their jingle. In the E.L.F. entry, she simply submitted a few pictures of herself, as the rules stated. Things started out innocently enough as her supporters rallied around her, leaving positive comments and her voting to the top in both contests nearly from the beginning. But then things got strange.

For the Safe Auto ad, people began leaving comments saying things such as “pool’s closed,” a statement she later learned was to indicate that because AIDS was in the pool, no one swam in it. They also started leaving lewd comments about her weight, a situation that Portia is unfortunately all too familiar with.

For the E.L.F. ad, she also got negative comments about her weight. On both websites, people claiming to be her supporters went on the pages of other contestants, claiming to be a fan of hers, and bashing others. Users began to complain that Portia was obviously rigging votes (the notion was that an overweight woman couldn’t possibly have as many supporters, especially for the cosmetics line).

One band that was close to the lead in the Safe Auto ad quit the contest because they felt that there was clearly some type of unfair voting advantage to her. She also found an Encyclopedia Dramatica website about herself. On it, they insulted her Internet radio show, her game show appearance on the short-lived Fox show “Hole In the Wall,” her movie appearance and pretty much every other project that she has worked on.

As things got weirder, Portia also began to have more callers and chatters on her internet radio show. Unfortunately, almost all of the callers and chatters were there to jeer her. Some called in just to say the word “nigger” before hanging up. Although she was mildly amused by the boredom of her new team of detractors, she decided to stop taking callers from unknown numbers and she closed her chat room. They may have had their moments of being humorous but they were starting to block her artery of reaching out to the public and she wasn’t going to let them take over her radio show with their antics.

It didn’t take Portia long to realize that there was definitely something big and strange going on. She began to notice that someone or something named “Ebaum” was leaving a lot of comments for her on the Safe Auto contest page. Comments from someone that posted themselves by the name of “Ebaumsworld” left comments saying “Im evil and i am not leaving,” “I will never leave, I will make you win,” and “even if you don’t want to win…you will.”

It sounds like somebody or somebodies mean business. One person even contacted her about a chat room where people go and meet up to discuss their plan to make Portia crash and burn. And that is when the pieces of the puzzle started to come together.

The search for answers began with a simple Google search of “Ebaum” and later “4chan.” It wasn’t long before it became clear of what Portia was really dealing with. A group of people from the website EbaumsWorld.com and 4chan.org were following her online. Their goal was for her to win both online contests and then bombard the sites with claims that she had cheated. They also called into her show and harassed her in hopes of hearing her eventually break down. While she did in fact win the popular vote in the E.L.F. cosmetic contest (although the people that ran the contest decided that she wouldn’t be in the running to actually be the new spokeswoman for the line- a blow to her hopes of getting to represent overweight women) and she was never close to breaking down or giving in, it remains to be seen how much of an impact the internet trolls will have with the results. The Safe Auto contest is still ongoing.

What is so mind boggling about the 4chan followers is how many of them there appear to be and how far reaching their activity levels go. The most jarring example of them disrupting the flow of a website was when they collectively decided to alter the results of Time.com’s poll of the Most Influential Person.

Their goal was to vote to make the beginning of the letters each person to spell out “Marblecake, also the game.” The winner of most influential was “Moot” the creator of the website. Moot won with over 16 million votes. The numbers of votes alone show just how popular and dedicated the groups are to wreak havoc. It’s been estimated that 4chan averages about 13 million hits a day and 5.6 million visitors a month.

Another victory for 4chan occurred when they voted to make Rick Astley (80’s one hit wonder singer of “Never Gonna Give You Up”) Best Act Ever at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards, their own major version of a rick rolling prank.

Despite the negative attention that her growing popularity has drawn, Portia is as dedicated as ever to prove her detractors wrong. Whether she was overweight or model thin, she knows that she has just as much right as anyone else to pursue her dreams and she’ll be darned if she lets Moot and his army destroy her chance at happiness. When asked about what she thinks her father would say about the negative attention from Ebaum and 4chan, she says that he’d laugh at the whole situation. He’d want her to “treat it like the joke that it is” and to “spin it into a positive experience.”

Apparently Rerun taught his daughter well.