Breaking 2/25/2011: Zach Anner wins his own travel show! click here for the latest details!
Origin
Zach Anner became an Internet sensation after a campaign on 4chan, YouTube, and Reddit was started to help “the wheelchair bound lady magnet” win a contest to be a guest host on oprah’s show. Large support for his campaign started on YouTube and Reddit.
Zach’s page on Oprah’s contest web site.
Spread
- Phrases said in the video (and Zach himself) became memetic on 4chan , especially the phrases “the sexiest of the palsies” and “no Atlantis is too underwater or fictional!”
- Zach answers questions for Reddit on June 23rd.
- On June 23rd Steven Crowder interviews Zach on Fox News.
- July 1st Zach rolls over Austin.
- On July 12th Reddit posts about making Zach a daily show correspondent.
Controversy
For a while the campaign was successful, but Zach lost his lead in what people accuse is a fix by the site or Oprah herself.
(HuffingtonPost)
This cheating caused /b/ to launch Operation SyPhyllis.
Geekosystem publishes an article about 4chan users claiming to have used a greasemonkey script to rig the votes.
Voting ending July 3rd with Zach leading at 9,161,042 votes. On July 9th the votes were published with Zach in the 7th position with 3,484,018 votes. (Reddit)
Afterward the contest was moved on to it’s own reality show, with Zach as one of the contestants.
Zach Wins
On 2/25/2011 Zach won his own travel show with the Oprah network. (Urlesque)
