hugz4uFounder

An original since November 2000, Ann Marie Sgaramella brought an infectious, exclamation-point-fueled warmth to eZabel that made even the most mundane threads feel like a group hug. Her screen name was practically a mission statement: she was the community's unofficial dispenser of affection, signing off messages with "love and hugz" and enough "xoxo"s to wallpaper a kingdom hall. Ann Marie was half of one of eZabel's signature couples alongside ballyhoo (Brett Holloway), and the two of them were adorably insufferable about it, tracking each other's score rankings like a competitive sport and celebrating when they landed back-to-back on the leaderboard. She was deeply embedded in the New Jersey crew, attending eZabel parties, go-karting days, and band shows, and she had the sort of social energy that meant she was always introducing herself to someone new or trying to set friends up on dates.

What made Ann Marie more than just the "hugz" persona was a sharp, playful wit that could sneak up on you. She roasted iwz for his spelling errors with gleeful precision, demanding spell check be added to the site and informing him that "there is 'a rat' in separate." She coined inside jokes about silent letters with chikvicious, delighted in stumping the community with trivia questions (and was genuinely indignant when someone answered too quickly), and had a gift for finding the absurd angle in any conversation, whether it was describing her paranoid routine at red lights in Byram ("the killer capital of the US") or consoling thefunkyfresh about Britney Spears's love life with deadpan sincerity. Her 9/11 comment about the man at Quick Chek who missed his flight showed a more reflective side, someone who noticed small human moments and wanted to bear witness to them.

Ann Marie was a connector. She traded trivia with punkprincess, schemed Florida trips with jay79, interrogated rocksupastar about mystery usernames with self-described "womanly manipulative skills," and was always the one organizing dinners or figuring out who was bringing dessert versus actual food to the next gathering. She read voraciously across the site, consuming 264 news articles and 40 journals, but her own posting tapered after 2002 as life moved on. Her peak was 2001, when she dropped 69 comments full of movie quotes, cat-nap observations, NyQuil-induced misadventures, and the kind of warm, rambling energy that made people want to write back. She got her workplace internet blocked for accidentally triggering a "terrorist websites" alert while looking up a wingdings urban legend, which might be the most quintessentially early-2000s thing anyone on eZabel ever did.

eZabel Personality Type: ESFJ — "The Hostess." Ann Marie was the person who made sure nobody felt left out, who remembered to congratulate you on your milestones and gently roast you for your typos. She hugged her way through eZabel's golden years, leaving behind a trail of exclamation points, trivia questions, and the distinct impression that she was always genuinely happy to see you.