Odin’s 13th birthday party turned into an Internet phenomenon.
All Melissa Camus hoped for was a bit of help from a Facebook group.
Her son, Odin, who has Asperger's syndrome, had sent out invitations to his 13th birthday party, scheduled for last Friday. Not one kid RSVP'd.
"I want his thirteenth birthday to feel special, and like people care about him," Camus wrote in a post on the Facebook page for a group she belongs to of moms in Peterborough, Ont. "I'm really struggling with finding a way to make today awesome for him, when it will just be us celebrating."
She then asked if members of the group could send Odin a text to wish him happy birthday.
Within a few hours, the Internet of good, not the one filled with every type of hate that we see so often, began to work its magic.
Text messages and tweets from across Canada and all over the world began pouring in – the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Toronto Raptors, Justin Trudeau, Elijah Wood and thousands of others wished Odin happy birthday.
In total, he received about 5,000 texts, and Twitter Canada estimated that more than 11, 000 tweets about Odin were posted, according to the Peterborough Examiner. The top Twitter trend in the country on Friday night was #odinbirthday.
The phenomenon didn't end there, thanks to the fact that Camus made the details of Odin's evening public on Facebook, where she invited people to come bowling with her son. When the 7th grader arrived at the Lakeview Bowling alley in a white limo, hundreds of people were waiting to give him cards, wish him happy birthday and go bowling with him.
The bowling alley was packed to capacity with about 250 people, and another 300 or 400 waiting outside, says co-owner Shawn McNamara.
All night long, McNamara was fielding calls from around the world – details of the party had gone public through Facebook.
Calls came in from Toronto, Georgia, Pennsylvania, California, British Columbia, Nunavut, Mexico, the U.K.
"It was crazy," McNamara says. He would scribble down each message and take it to Odin.
"At first it was overwhelming and then it sort of touched my heart that people know about me now," Odin told CP24 on Monday.
Odin's birthday celebrations is the second great recent example of social media flexing its power for good.
A few weeks ago, a 4chan user posted a picture of an overweight man dancing and the mocking words, "Spotted this specimen trying to dance the other week. He stopped when he saw us laughing."
Rather than share in the derision, Cassandra Fairbanks, a writer in California, launched a social media campaign to find the man and throw him a dance party.
"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," read the invitation. "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."
The campaign was quick to pick up support from famous faces, including Pharrell Williams, Moby and Andrew W.K.
The party for the "Dancing Man," as he prefers to be known as, is expected to happen this summer. The Internet is too often a place of vitriol and loathing, a mirror for the worst parts of ourselves. It's easy to anonymously hate and to spew it online.
But campaigns like the ones for Odin's birthday or the Dancing Man show that it's just as easy to change someone's life for the better, even if it is just for one night.
Dave McGinn