People Who Got Owned By The Internet

The thing about the Internet is that it's absolutely no good at keeping secrets. Take the recent case of Manchester United soccer player Ryan Giggs. When it looked like his affair with British Big Brother star Imogen Thomas was going to go public, Giggs's lawyers prevailed on the notoriously stupid British legal system for a "superinjunction" that would make it a crime for the press to discuss the affair or even the presence of the injunction. That steez just doesn't fly in the 2K11 and within days of the ruling Twitter was boiling over with people talking about it. The whole thing would have been less of a scandal if Giggs didn't try to cover it up, but the internet hates rich people abusing the law. His speaking out about the situation on the BBC can be seen on YouTube.

I think it's fair to say that we're going to see ownage perpetrated at least once by the horrible individuals that cluster around 4Chan. The self-proclaimed "internet hate machine" is capable of some wholesale destruction with unprecedented panache. Take the case of Jessi Slaughter. When a video of this Midwestern teenager claiming that she would find her haters and "pop a Glock in their mouth and make a brain slushie" landed on /b/, the gang there exploded in an orgy of harassment so ridiculous that it caused Slaughter to wind up on Good Morning America. It was revealed that not only was Slaughter just eleven years old, she had also claimed to be having a sexual relationship with a member of scenecore band Blood On The Dance Floor. Yuh dun goofed indeed.

The interconnectedness of the internet has made it possible for information to spread faster than ever before, for better or for worse. That makes it very easy to root out fakers. Case in point: Aleksey Vayner. The Yale student created a "video resume" in 2006 that he sent to the HR department of financial firm UBS. On the tape, Vayner karate-chopped cinderblocks in half, demonstrated his ballroom dancing skills and bench-pressed 495 pounds. Needless to say, it was hilarious, and the video - titled "Impossible Is Nothing" quickly went viral, exposing even more lies in Vayner's background (including his claim that the Dalai Lama wrote his college recommendation letter). Needless to say, he didn't get the job.

EDITOR'S NOTE: We'd embed the Aleksey's video here but, unfortunately, we don't speak German. So instead, we have Michael Cera mocking Aleksey.

Many of the people on this list landed here because of their own hubris. They deserved what came to them, and I shed no tears. But sometimes the Internet can cause collateral damage to somebody who totally doesn't deserve it. Homeless man William Todd was one of many individuals displaced by the 1993 Mississippi River flooding photographed by Matt Kenlon in his book America's Refuse: Homeless In The Heartland. Many years later, somebody took one of Todd's pictures, added the text "YOU GONNA GET RAPED" to it, and it became an Internet meme. Then it made its way back to Biloxi, where Todd was working at a newspaper. The picture was brought up at his employee review and he was fired, despite having nothing to do with it. Cruel fate indeed.

Let's get back to the scumbags, so we can feel better about ourselves. Casey Serin was one of the many real estate entrepreneurs who thought that "flipping" houses was a fast path to wealth. Unfortunately, he went a little too public with his financial dealings and became an unemployable laughingstock. After buying eight houses and grossly lying on his mortgage applications, he began blogging about the whole debacle on his website, IAmFacingForeclosure.com. Instead of finding sympathy from his readers, Serin quickly turned into an object of mockery as he chased one idiotic get-rich-quick scheme after another, including investing heavily in gold and trying to sell e-books.

Some may be a little freaked out at the Orwellian world of eternal surveillance that cameraphones and YouTube have created, but when it helps take down people like Mary Bale, the sacrifice might be worth it. Coventry native Bale came to the attention of the Internet when video of her throwing a kitten into a garbage can hit YouTube. The cat's owners set up a Facebook page to figure out her identity, and it wasn't long before Bale was outed and the death threats came pouring in. When you get famous as an animal abuser, you stay that way.

Another victim of the hurricane of horror called Anonymous really had it coming. Aaron Barr was the CEO of HBGary Federal, a security consulting firm that saw itself on the frontlines of cyber-terrorism. Unfortunately, Barr - who was working on discovering the real identites of members of Anonymous - was not very good at his job. The group ripped his company's servers apart, releasing his emails to the public, hijacking his Twitter account, remotely wiping his iPad and more. Made a laughingstock in front of the whole security community, it's doubtful Barr will ever work again in security.

One of the best things about the Internet is watching a-holes get their comeuppance. In the case of Les Andrews, it was through a single punch. Andrews, a member of that particularly odious subculture known as "chavs," was captured on video ranting at a local man, who calmly stepped back and knocked him to the turf with just one punch. The video went viral like whoa, and Andrews not only had a talking-to from the local police but saw his reputation completely shattered. His precious reputation as a douchebag.

In the old days, celebrities facing scandals would have their dirty laundry aired by tabloid magazines sold to old ladies at the supermarket. But with the advent of the Internet, doom can come from anywhere. It was sports website Deadspin that single-handedly turned Brett Favre from a titan of the gridiron into a ridiculous sexting maniac. Favre's idiotic messages to The Daily Line host Jenn Sterger, including pictures of his dong, didn't get him kicked out of the NFL, but they basically destroyed his legacy forever.

So you're a reasonably hot UCLA coed on your way to a bright future. How would you best screw that up? In the case of Alexandra Wallace, it would be by recording a video about Asians in the school library and using the phrase "ching chong," among others. The massive response to the insane video, which was posted after the earthquake in Japan, made Wallace drop out of school for her own safety and tarred her forever with the brush of a ridiculous racist.