flyingfree1125OG 2001

One of eZabel's original members and the youngest voice in the Porrino sisterhood, Alison arrived in the summer of 2001 at roughly twelve years old and immediately started giving iwz unsolicited product feedback — suggesting a user directory and profile forms before she'd even been on the site a month. That combination of fearlessness and earnest enthusiasm defined her entire run. She was malibu's little sister, but she never played the role of anybody's sidekick. With 345 comments across seven years, a Social Butterfly badge for threading conversations with 69 different members, and attendance at 22 events — from go-karts to bonfires to Band From Society shows — she wove herself into the fabric of the community with the persistence of someone who simply refused to be left out.

Her journals read like a highlight reel of adolescent chaos and wonder. There was the time her parents decamped to Disney World without her ("They claim it's a 'buissness trip' I don't think so they're probaly sitting by the spa in their hotel right now"), the bomb scare at Lenape Valley where the bus driver told them "You never should have gotten on the bus" and an exchange student kept insisting they had to go to school anyway, and the boardwalk witnessing expedition where she and a crew of sisters talked to guys who'd never heard of Jehovah's Witnesses and "ended up getting 30 minutes of service time." She wrote poetry about gardens under starlight, asked the hard-hitting question of what Captain Hook's name was before Peter Pan cut off his hand, and publicly debated whether to change her screen name from Power4Superman to FreeOfDoughboy. Superman was the through-line — her AIM handle was powers4superman, and she once declared that hugs were "the best thing you could eeeeeeeeeever get..... except something relating to Superman."

Her banter was relentless and genuinely funny. She told rocksupastar he looked "unusualy normal" in a photo, then followed up with "you shouldnt be talking that requires thinking and you might hurt yourself." She informed crazygirl that her name means "of noble birth" and therefore "im a queen. Go fetch me some water." She once described her own ears by quoting her dad: "i look like a car on the freeway driving with the doors open but I like them that way it makes me my own person." Her closest bonds ran through the Stanhope/Hackettstown circle — delliott101, who called being considered her big brother "outstanding," ekulu, with whom she had a pattern of spirited arguments followed by heartfelt apologies, and hunkpapap, her go-to for concert plans, dance lessons, and general mischief in the later years. She was tight with socalgal, fivezero, and juicymango, and her Movies and Television forum presence — 29 comments, mostly dissecting Lost plot twists and mourning John Ritter — showed a kid who genuinely loved stories and wanted to talk about them with anyone who'd listen.

eZabel Personality Type: ESFP — "The Boardwalk Evangelist." Alison grew up on eZabel in the most literal sense, arriving as a preteen and posting her last comment at sixteen about a snowstorm ruining her driving test. She brought unfiltered energy to every thread she touched — part class clown, part loyal sister, part wide-eyed kid who thought this was "the greatest site ever made" and swore she would "hunt them down and hurt them soooo bad" if anyone ever destroyed it. She meant it, too. Every exclamation point.