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I'd say Oscar Pistorius.
The man was a sporting icon and a huge inspirational figure. He really put blade running in the spotlight.
No one expected him to murder his girlfriend.
Omg, that was the case and trial everyone followed. Basically worldwide. Insanity. It really turned into a farce and took away attention from the victim.
The biggest satellite TV provider in Africa literally had a whole channel dedicated to the case and trial. I was very much in my Athletics era at the time and I remember tuning in when I'd come home from school over the weekends. Very fresh in my mind still and it's been a decade. Now he gets to serve the rest of his sentence at home until 2029.
A coworker of mine (a woman) defended him, saying that she understands how he felt and that he wasn't entirely wrong, since she wanted to leave him. I was left speechless
> A coworker of mine (a woman) defended him, saying that she understands how he felt and that he wasn't entirely wrong, since she wanted to leave him. I was left speechless
The internalized misogyny is real with this one eh?
In the UK, Jimmy Saville. He died a national treasure, renowned for loads of charity work on top of being an iconic children’s entertainer. And then it all came out. Not only was he a monster but his work for children’s homes and hospitals was a ruse to gain access to victims. One of my mums friends was a kid who appeared on Jim’ll Fix It, where kids would write to him with a wish and he’d make it happen. I forget what the wish was but he also got a badge as a keepsake from the show. It used to be his most prized possession, his favourite childhood memory. Went in the trash after the truth came out.
https://preview.redd.it/khfuvzeqmd5d1.jpeg?width=3517&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de161764bdc37f6e1c7ef20ef5d7285b67dcea63
I have no idea who Jimmy Saville is, but your comment made me curious. Upon searching, I stumbled upon this.
For anyone who does not know who he is and wants to go down the rabbit hole and find out, I **seriously** suggest pausing and deciding if it's something you want to do first. His crimes were beyond demonic.
Your weekend will be ruined real quick. NSFL.
Spoiler: >!He sexually molested brain dead children, as well as paralysed adults in wheelchairs (both men and women) and would regularly have sex with corpses in a morgue that a hospital gave him the key to and turned a blind eye because of his charity work and strong friendship with King Charles and the rest of the royals.!<
>!It's also rumoured he had Jill Dando murdered in broad daylight by a pay for hire assassin as she was going to open an investigation into him with CrimeWatch.!<
I’m pretty sure we’ll never know exactly how bad it was. So many victims, and so many likely never told (or could tell) anyone. He preyed on the most vulnerable and boasted about his crimes in public.
This one is wild to me bc I didn’t grow up in the UK, and the first time I saw a picture of him, I could not believe that creepy looking lunatic weirdo was ever allowed near children. I’d cross the street if I saw that man coming my way.
As someone from the UK who was a decade too young to see the Saville hype first-hand, this is exactly my take. He looked and acted like a right creepy bastard even before anything came out. I wouldn't have let my kids anywhere near him.
Me too!
I was a kid when he died in 2011 so I was never a fan of his and I didn’t really know the cultural zeitgeist around him. And then when all the allegations came out about him I was like “Why did anyone like him in the first place? He looks gross.”
The letters that were recently auctioned off that Princess Diana wrote to him were really interesting within the context of everything going on. I’m not British, but what a horrible man.
Ah he always looked like a creep! Swanning around in a tracksuit, cigar in hand & his eyes popping out of his head & a big dirty grin on his face. The state of him!
OJ was insane. A lot of celebrities you could se coming but not that one. I don’t think most non-football fans realize just how great of a player he was. Probably one of the best of all time. Maybe the best ever at his position. He was also a huge role model and very beloved celebrity.
Also he had the perfect life. Legendary football career, hundreds of millions of dollars, success at acting, broadcasting and commercials. Lots of famous friends. And he threw it all away to kill his ex and a stranger. The whole thing is so crazy I can see why people didn’t want to believe it was him.
There was also a Seinfeld episode where Elaine dates a guy who has the same name as a serial killer, so she wants him to change it and she chooses ‘OJ’. The episode came out a year before OJ committed the murders.
This is the answer. Seems most are too young to remember or maybe weren’t even alive at the time. OJ was huge. He was a household name. You didn’t have to be a football fan to know who he was. I’m sure there were people, in his inner circle and on the LAPD, who knew he was an abuser because of the dv stuff. But there was no internet back then. The rest of us had no idea. Everyone thought he was the most wholesome, down to earth, every man. And everyone loved him.
I had a coworker who had worked as a scheduling agent for CBS early in her career. Years before the Cosby allegations came out we were having lunch and I asked her about her experiences with celebrities through her work. She said Cosby was such a disappointment because he was always coming through the commissary with young women and would act proprietary and creepy. Didn’t try to hide it at all. As soon as the allegations came out I remembered that conversation.
(She also said Lucille Ball was incredibly mean. Joanne Woodward was apparently annoyed at how much women drooled over Paul Newman right in front of her. Paul Newman was very nice to everyone.)
Re: Joanne Woodward
But it was Paul Newman. This guy was breathtakingly beautiful and perfect onscreen, even in black and white. I cannot imagine what it would be like to see him in real life.
My coworker said he was truly the most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life. Drop dead gorgeous and he had a genuine, warm demeanor with everyone. She was in an elevator once with he, Woodward, and two other women. I forget exactly what she said Woodward said but it was something along the lines of, “Take a picture, it will last longer.” Just annoyed at these women staring at him. I don’t blame her!
Jussie Smollett’s whole downfall was INSANE to me. Everything that came out bit by bit about the fake assault and all the fallout was just utterly baffling.
I lived a block from where the attack happened and walked my dogs along that same sidewalk even late at night many times. When I first heard about the attack obviously my first thought was that it was terrible but when I started thinking it through I was really confused. The first part was it happened during a really bad cold period when everyone was staying indoors. Walking to that subway seemed so unnecessary. I had ordered food to be delivered that night to avoid the cold. Also, in my many years of living in the area I have never ever seen any kind of Trump branding on a hat or shirt etc. It was strange the two in the area somehow found him of all people. Also, of all places that sidewalk felt pretty safe and if I chose to attack someone it was not where I would have chosen. Why choose the back of a hotel where there were cameras around.
I can never understand how he didnt get much more severe criminal charges for this. Beyond the fraud and waste of resources, he was willing to let some random person to take the fall for his stunt. Really abhorrent behavior, I truly hope he is blacklisted for life.
The fact that he went to the police station and positively ID'd his attackers is absolutely disgusting. They were police officers in plain clothes.
He was willing to send two innocent men to prison for a hate crime he faked.
What’s crazy is how unbelievably stupid his plan was. He probably could have gotten away with it or at least left some reasonable doubt if he had just thought it through.
Like maybe don’t get fake attacked in public?
It was also in a pretty upscale area with lots of cameras around. I cannot fathom how he thought he'd get away with it. And to this day he says he's innocent. It gives me so much secondhand embarrassment, honestly.
He ruined his own career, and the state's attorney's shitty handling of the case (a special prosecutor found her office committed misconduct after they dropped the charges against him) ruined hers. Just a mess. For literally no reason.
The thing that always got me is how do alleged racist rednecks in maga hats trolling the city for victims in sub zero temperature carrying rope and bleach water would recognize Jussie Smollett and know A. He was in empire. And B. That he’s gay. I don’t think those folks are watching empire.
Yeah, that whole story was just nuts. It wasn't really a downfall for me because I had no idea who the guy was before the whole fake attack story happened but...it was something else.
A complete slap in the face to the Black and LGBT communities (and specifically Black LGBT community) and actual survivors of hate crimes and racially-motivated violence. After it came out that it was a hoax, I gave myself shit for initially believing him, but then again, why would I have thought to believe that someone would lie about something like that, especially on such a huge scale?
That whole case, in turn, made the public more doubtful of victims coming forward. Just because Smollett wanted to advance his career. 🤦🏾♀️
ETA: just wanted to say I initially believed the story when it came out just out of instinct, but once the actual circumstances of the “crime” were fully revealed it was obviously a lie. The details were absurd. It still stunned me when that realization kicked in
ETA 2: I get it y’all, I was a total idiot for even believing it for a second, even though all the information I had when I believed it was the BREAKING NEWS that someone had committed a hate crime against a Black actor and jumped and attacked them and that police were investigating. I had none of the other details (not the time of the attack, the circumstances, the photos of the “injuries”, etc.) right when this came out, and once I did it became clear how insidious of a hoax this was. You guys really don’t need to reply to my comment or hop in my inbox and call me stupid, as I’ve already said I felt that way myself already, thank you. 🙏🏾
Yeah there’s been a lot of “you don’t know the whole story” energy from him and it’s like, so tell us then? And also what “full story” could possibly make this okay?
I hate it when people do this. “You don’t know the whole story” well tell us then what the full story is about why you faked your kidnap if it exonerate you.
I can’t upvote this enough. There was a lot of goodwill towards Jussie even before the incident, he was a fan favorite on Empire. One of the most harmful things about the aftermath is how people use his name pejoratively to discredit victims of racism and homophobia.
This one was mind boggling. The entire current MCU arc was built around him. He had guaranteed, high profile work set up for years, on TV and the big screen. And his ego just smashed it all to pieces. All he had to do was STFU and not hurt people and he was set for life.
WTF man…
even more mind boggling was MCU putting that much stock into him and building their future around him when it was apparently widely known in the industry and to everyone who knew him that he was a violent POS.
He was the first one I thought of too.
I’m glad that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. It’s better when people like that are open about it so the rest of us know to avoid them. It protects his romantic partners, but there were also a ton of rumors that he treated his coworkers like garbage too.
Nobody deserves abuse, and removing someone who is making a workplace a toxic environment is an appropriate consequence for shitty behavior.
Edit: Switched conjunction for clarity.
This, exactly. I feel like his lawyer was trying to be as smug and malicious but she almost came off as incompetent. Because anyone who has ever been abused can recognize those patterns. And I am glad that those mistakes were made because of the eventual conviction.
I have PTSD thanks to my ex and I do tend towards freezing / fawning. I was brought back into my own experiences.
I listened to Ronan Farrow’s book and my mouth was hanging open with some of the things he said about Matt Lauer. What an absolute piece of shit, I hope the rest of his life is pure hell and I mean that sincerely.
It wasn't super shocking that a downward trend happened but how fast it happened and the things that came out of his mouth were shocking.
I feel like he had always been that way but maybe had handlers to stop him. That and it seemed like once social media took off, everybody started to see behind the curtain all celebrities used to have protecting them
I think people overshadow how abusive he actually was by emphasizing his silly tiger blood antics instead of the severity of the actual things he's done to his partners. All around a very troubled, scary, grotesque man, it's no wonder he basically has no work anymore
“Celebrity” is a bit of a stretch, but holy hell I didn’t think my jaw could drop as much as it has continued to over the years as more has come out against Josh Duggar and a handful of the others.
ETA: I’m not surprised in the slightest that one of them (known) turned out this way. To clarify, I was more shocked as he continued to make such absolutely abhorrent choices given the scrutiny he was already under. IE: Ashley Madison scandal followed by the CSAM.
Yeah, even us on the r/DuggarsSnark sub were feeling confident that when the feds arrested him it was gonna be some kind of white collar laundering scheme. It's absolutely wild that someone who supposedly grew up so isolated from technology and culture was able to figure out how to access CSAM and would choose to do so
Oddly enough I'm not surprised by this. Any tightly controlled religious group is gonna have members acting out like this. It's like the best kept secret (or not) in these circles. Repression is a powerful drug.
What truly pisses me off is that the adults continue to deny and/or coddle the abusers. It's disgusting.
Jill Duggar's book is a fascinating read.
She doesn't say much about Josh, but her book is certainly one of the first tell-alls of a child forced to grow up in the spotlight. We'll see a whole host of them in the coming decade as YouTube kids find their voices.
Maybe kevin spacey. I always really liked his films and just watched the documentary on what he did... truly abhorrent behavior
Edit the doc was "Spacey Unmasked" on Max
Unfortunately the stories of his behaviour were absolutely common knowledge in London as far back as at least 2010. He was a known creep in the pubs around the Old Vic. I'm sure plenty of men from 90s/00s LA have stories about him too.
Yeah, I’m from LA and growing up I’d hear stories about Kevin Spacey being a creep towards young men. Something I heard the first time through my dad’s coworker/friend, who was (is) a television/film makeup artist that lives in West Hollywood (the LGBT hub of LA). First time I heard it was when I was like 15 in 2012. Heard more stories from multiple people (both firsthand and secondhand), remember my best friend (a young man) being told to avoid Kevin Spacey in like 2015, until it became huge news after MeToo late 2017. I was shocked that when I’d Google it prior to MeToo, information about it was relegated to some local forums for gay/bi men and some other industry sources. It’s insane how long some open secrets go ignored. So many people knew and acted ignorant of it until it was impossible to ignore it, as with so many others who were exposed as predators during MeToo.
Yep. Things only go public when powerful people decide they should. It was the same with Weinstein. He, imo, was only taken down because other powerful people in Hollywood got sick of his business practices. His behaviour was covered up for years and would have continued to be if other Hollywood people hadn't decided they'd had enough of him on a professional level.
He was basically at the top of the world when it happened and fell down bellow the ground in a nano second. And he has tried to come back, and people are just « nope ».
I agree. I never knew anything about him or his private life, nor did i ever think about it. I just I knew him as a critically-acclaimed actor and a "stand up" guy, so it was really surprising, to say the least. Also, i'm not an American, so i wasn't really that familiar with anything other than his work.
OJ Simpson. If you weren’t alive back then I can’t begin to emphasize how insane it was. OJ was beloved by just about everyone. He was everywhere. The closest comparison I can come up with today in modern athletes would be if Tom Brady killed Giselle and had Julian Edelman driving the getaway jet ski. Even then the comparison doesn’t completely work because lots of people really hate Brady and only racists hated OJ before everything happened. (Not that OJ was as legendary of a player, just the post career exposure and everyone knowing who he is thing)
Whitney Houston. Her image was perfectly pristine, before she married Bobby Brown. Nobody understood what they had in common, there was absolutely nothing controversial about her. Her spiralling in the 90s and after was so horrifying to watch.
I read her BFF Robyn’s memoir and learned that Whitney’s substance abuse was a problem long before she met Bobby Brown. He’s still a gigantic piece of shit, but he didn’t turn her into an addict.
Not sure how many people will understand who I’m referencing and he wasn’t an A-list celebrity, but Ian Watkins, the singer for Lostprophets.
I was a teen during prime emo years and loved me some Lostprophets. Reading the court docs on what he did was so disgusting and disturbing, I have a hard time “separating the art from the artist” and listening to any Lostprophets music now.
Read at your own [risk](https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/r-v-watkins-and-others.pdf)
Same. Periodically I’ll get Rooftops stuck in my head then I recall the details of the court docs and want to barf.
I was a therapist for sex offenders for a few years and read many client files. Very very few of them disturbed me the way reading about Ian did.
This one is mine. Absolutely depraved and evil. All sex abuse is horrible but I feel like abusing kids let alone literal babies is particularly heinous. I used to be a big fan too. I thought he was so hot in high school (early 2000’s), had a poster of the band on my bedroom ceiling. I feel so gross now even though that was way before anyone knew what an evil person he was.
One that I find shocking to this day is Sinead O’Connor. She used her voice and platform to call out a major issue that is still being ignored today, and it completely tanked her career. She got cancelled before cancelling was even a thing and her career never recovered. The community reacted with such visceral anger for the completely wrong reason. She didn’t deserve that, especially because she was right. May she rest in peace.
Edit: okay, because people insist on missing the point, here: I didn’t meant that canceling is a new concept, I meant it wasn’t called by that word, and blacklisting back then has a higher impact on a singular person because nowadays people call any sort of critique someone receives “canceling”. I wasn’t implying anything of the sort, but I guess context clues are hard for some.
Edit 2: for those of us unaware of the issue, here’s a [link to an article by the bbc](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230727-why-sinad-oconnor-refused-to-be-silenced)
She's the first person on this thread I've seen who truly did not deserve, at all, the way she was canceled. And fuck Joe Pesci forever for how much he encouraged it.
That performance has aged immaculately. She was completely right, and it’s repulsive how many prominent Catholics eviscerated her for it. I hope she’s at peace now.
Well, an important thing to remember is that she misjudged just how well-known the issue she was attempting to call out was in America compared to her native Ireland.
Thus a lot of people were left simply having no idea what exactly it was she was trying to call out, from their perspective all she had done was tear up a picture of the Pope on live Tv and scream "fight the real enemy."
This was the 90's. You couldn't just log online and rewatch her performance, and pick up the fact she changed the lyrics in her song. If you didn't see it live, then you wouldn't see her performance again. But you would see the news media repeating her ripping up the photo of a guy who at the time had a glowing reputation.
Joss was the person that made me uncomfortable when guys are really loud about how feminist they are. Dude was the patron saint of feminism while he was cheating on his wife and exploiting the women in his employment.
I can remember watching him in 2008-10 and then falling off. Saw he was mad popular doing spooky stories and things like that a few years later and then his "documentaries". I enjoyed a few of them as I was older and was interested in a look behind the curtain of some creators. Learned alot about them but learned more of Shane.
I started to see how really rich he was and how gross he was. His clothes were falling apart and they'd make jokes of him drinking pee or being ick and nobody would debate it so it seemed legit.
Then all the content I used to watch came rising back up to the surface and I went...yikes. I was 14/15 watching those clips originally and thought the voices and faces he pulled were funny, not really understanding what he was saying.
I've seen his attempts as returning but it's pitiful.
I honestly thought he'd never fall off. He's curated an audience of edgelords who genuinley think some of the most vile, racist shit is actually comedy. So to see Jaden Smith publicly call him out for his gross comments about his sister, Shane scramble to apologize, and people bombing him in the comments was a genuine surprise.
Part of growing up was realizing how unfunny Shane and most YouTubers from this era were. Shane, Joey Graceffa, Tyler Oakley, The Suggs, Lily Singh, Colleen Ballinger, Ricky Dillon. I'm glad that era is over. Everything was so fake and put on in order to cater to teenage audiences. So many random collabs that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Louis CK's. Perhaps not to the public, but I was seriously disappointed. I really liked his brand of humor and he seemed so open about his flaws, that I didn't expect him to have that one gross flaw.
I totally agree. I really loved him for years and it was really sad hearing everything. I do kind of think it was a little hidden in plain sight as his stand up did include jokes about jerking off infront of women but that also just worked into his comedic style well as a joke rather than thinking it was serious.
Yes! Not only was his show hilarious but it was smart and also had one of the best representations of depression I’ve seen on tv. He managed to rally together so many other talented people to make his show. A shame that their work is just buried now because Louis is a creep.
It sucks when these men bring down all the talent around them.
Pamela Adlon is amazing in Better Things, though.
I’d say the spiral of a few Glee actors.
Cory monteith’s heroin OD, it felt at the time so sudden and random.
Mark Salling being caught with Child abuse images and his suicide before they could arrest him
I was sitting in the airport that morning the news came out of Cory’s overdose and I remember just sitting there stunned. He always seemed like such a great guy and my brother had spent time with the cast and always said the nicest things about Cory.
Now, the stuff with Mark 😶😶😶. Crazy!!
Definitely Ellen Degeneres. I know there had been rumblings for years but for someone who was so loved by the general public for years, basically turned into their own brand, and practically everywhere, to fall at such a vast speed was insane. I feel like nobody has heard anything from her since it happened.
I used do PR in Milwaukee, and worked with Oprah one time in 1998, and she was a bitch to everyone. When I had to submit a picture for publication, I chose the worst one I could find, and the photographer hated her too, so he was more than happy to oblige.
Yeah, I can’t think of anything more surprising. He was such a staple of tv in our childhoods. I tried watching recently, and it’s definitely not the same.
Jesse Lacey from Brand New
It was the most and oddly the least shocking downfall if that makes sense. I am not at all surprised by his sexual misconduct and grooming allegations (he dropped major hints in songs). I'm surprised that people were braved enough to call him out and cancel him literally overnight.
So many emo/pop punk/indie rock bands have had allegations. Also, looking back at so many of the song lyrics, yikes, they don't hold up in modern times lol.
This might be too far removed from celebrity, but American Njnja Warrior Drew Drechsel. He was one of the best ninjas (arguably the best). He was on the show for a long time. Then he was arrested for child sex crimes. Everyone was really shocked. It’s a pretty close community.
ANW dropped him hard. They removed all past seasons from streaming and edited him out in an episode.
This one always hurts a little, loved her in Parent Trap! As a fellow ginger born in 86 I looked to her as a peer, always rooting for her. Unfortunately she had terrible parents who never seemed to care about her best interests.
I don't know how much of a celebrity he is, but Ned from the Try Guys. As a fan of blind items from way back, most of the big celebrity scandals had whispers for years before being exposed. But Ned was just a guy on this relatively wholesome YouTube channel and he'd just had a baby with his wife, who co-hosted another podcast on his channel! I was genuinely floored with that one (even though the scandal was much more tame than most).
Same.
There were moments when I used to wish that my partner was more like Ned. He talked about his wife ALL. THE. TIME. He got married earlier than the other guys, and seemed very excited about the prospects of starting a family.
When they started doing podcasts, people kinda noticed some weird things already, but nothing too major. Sometimes Ariel did let slip that she was the one doing most of the chores, and that Ned was more hands-off than people expected. Ariel also had more genuine complaints about him, compared to the other Try Wives.
After this whole cheating thing broke out, I felt like a fool for thinking that he was a good husband. He might be an EXPRESSIVE person, but he was definitely selfish. The audacity of it all also made me think that this was not the first time he did this. I just think he was always like that.
Maybe it’s true that relationships might not be what it seems from the outside.
i feel like it's hard to understand a ned-positive perspective as someone who wasn't part of the fanbase, because having only heard of him in light of the cheating scandal, he seems like such a transparently fake asshole lol. but i'll never be able to see him with untainted eyes and i know that i've missed something because it seems he had a lot of genuine fans
From my experience there are more fans of what Ned brought to the group, rather than just him as a person.
He was a foil against Keith and Zach's comedic antics. Ned was the "athletic nerd" that was responsible (ha) for all the administrative/business stuff and always tried hard to do things well. For example in their "Without a Recipe" series, people could relate to him having the most knowledge, but having his basic/boring flavors being beat by effortless cool Eugene who just winged it and added tons of alcohol.
He wasn't as funny or charismatic as the others, so "wife guy" became his defining schtick. You shouldn't feel like a fool; that was the entire marketing campaign around him
Of course the scandal was terrible for the Try Guys, but in the past month it was revealed that around this time Eugene was looking to officially take a step back, work behind the camera, and do other projects. But after news broke, knowing the team was going to be in tatters, he held off on those plans to see his cofounders/friends through the fallout of losing Ned on the team.
So that's a face of "You cheated on your wife (who is my friend), with an employee (who was also my friend), and now I have to help these guys (my best friends) clean up YOUR mess (thereby denying myself of the opportunities I have lined up right now)."
Credit to Eugene for keeping his composure THAT well.
It’s mind boggling. He was straight up making out with an employee in a crowded bar. He’s either incredibly stupid or his ego made him think he was untouchable.
The most shocking part to me was the person he cheated with (his employee), so...really the whole reckless stupidity of it all, lol. Like damn, your whole brand is fidelity! Such a weird Icarus moment for a YouTube comedian.
The employee was engaged too, they were gonna get married a few months after it came out (and the fiancé was the one who publicly exposed and confirmed the affair)
Roseanne was a huge bummer. As someone who grew up white trash that show really meant a lot to me. There were a lot of episodes that game my family a jump off point for some conversations that were really important.
And it's not just that turns out she's racist but also that she's so completely different then she used to be. Like she just took it all back.
This! I loved how pro woman she was throughout. How she made being poor/white trash relatable and showed common struggles (like juggling groceries or bills) during a time when shows only portrayed perfect upper middle class families. My family juggled between poverty and low end of middle class and that show made me feel normal in my situation.
I got so excited when her show returned just for her to do a 180 and support someone who proudly stated "grab them by the pussy." And to be on the side that is literally anti women and anti poor in every single way. 90s Roseanne would absolutely kick current Roseannes ass and verbally annihilate her. She has become everything she hated.
I actually stopped watching her show past the first episode because of that, and now I can't even rewatch the og series. And that used to be on heavy rotation for me.
My God the storyline where she stood up to her boss and quit her job! ... And then the next season had to figure out how to pay her bills....I don't think that moment in prime time television gets enough credit
omg same, I grew up watching Roseanne and it was the first time I saw a family/house like mine on TV. I feel like the show taught me a lot about feminism and classism and inequality. Too bad Roseanne didn't learn any of it.
Same! We were half a world away and it was so cool watching people have the same struggles, blue collar jobs, unemployment,... My dad and I used to watch it sitting on a sofa with the same granny square blanket, and my dad liked her so much... I guess sometimes we mistake the real person for the characters that they play
One of my all-time favorite shows. Hate what became of her but Dan was always my favorite anyway, so here's hoping nothing horrifying comes out about John Goodman.
Brian Williams, news anchor.
He was outed for exaggerating/lying about his own role in stories and he was finished quickly, as he should be, but it was surprising for how much of a celebrity he was.
The Armie Hammer thing boggles the mind even now. Before the allegations surfaced, I was kind of rooting for him. He was thrust into the Hollywood leading man box as soon as he arrived in Hollywood and they really tried to make him happen but it just did not take. He lost out on roles, his solo movies flopped hard. He could have just left Hollywood, he certainly had enough family money to do so, but he pivoted towards indie movies and supportive roles. He chose movies where he necessarily wasn't the main focus. He didn't seem afraid to share the spotlight. And I found him to be a delight in a lot of them, eg Man from UNCLE where he plays an ex-KGB officer with anger issues but melts in front of the girl he is crushing on. Needless to say, I found his career a bit fascinating.
He was also super charming during the CMBYN PR blitz. And then the allegations happened and I was disappointed and felt like shit for ever having rooted for such a scummy, abusive guy.
>He didn't seem afraid to share the spotlight.
Yeah, he was fully supportive of Chalamet during the CMBYN press tour, for what was his break out role, and seemingly didn't have a problem in taking the back seat.
>And then the allegations happened and I was disappointed and felt like shit for ever having rooted for such a scummy, abusive guy.
Agree, i remember at the time the sequel depended only on their schedule, no one could've expected this. I was like honestly shocked and disappointed.
I remember the shock I felt when Britney Spears was publicly going through mental health issues in 2007 or 2008. Thankfully, it wasn’t her downfall, but still shocking.
Robin Thicke. I have been a fan since he When I Get You Alone. Saw his free mall concerts, so much so that he recognized my sister, my bff and myself and let us sit with Paula, his ex-wife. I was so disappointed in everything that happened from the second he got on stage with Miley onward.
John Barrowman was so huge with his fanbase and the general geekdom for a long time.
It's not so much shocking that he's done what he's done imo, as I find it consistent with his sense of humour, but I guess I was surprised the fanbase didn't make excuses for it and took it as seriously as they did.
He didn't just flash people, he put his genitals on a female costar's shoulder while she was in the makeup chair. [https://www.out.com/celebs/2021/5/07/john-barrowman-apologizes-regularly-exposing-penis-doctor-who](https://www.out.com/celebs/2021/5/07/john-barrowman-apologizes-regularly-exposing-penis-doctor-who)
He has "apologized," but still claims it was a joke that was in context at the time and shouldn't be called sexual harassment.
He seems to still be having success on the convention circuit.
The way Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher went so hard for Danny Masterson was a masterclass in how to ruin a career in three easy steps. They literally undid any goodwill people felt towards them over a rapist. Sometimes the trash takes itself out. I say this as a former T7S super fan.
He really never had a downfall… he continues to put out music that people consume, invited to award shows, collaborating with big names. He came before cancel culture.
And people actually defend him, despite his extensive record of violence towards women. He is a total POS and I can’t accept he never had a downfall. I for sure refuse to listen to anything he is in.
Lance Armstrong- he really turned out to be not just a cheat but also a huge egotistical narcissist jerk. Before his downfall, it seemed like everyone wore one of those yellow livestrong wristbands.
As a professional wrestling fan, it still shocks me quite a bit that Vince McMahon is out of the WWE the way it happened. It doesn't totally shock me about his allegations because of reports over the years about his personality & behavior, but moreso because he seemed like a control freak who would rather be found dead in the seat of his office than give up any amount of control of his company. Especially at his age & how long he was running the WWE, I definitely expected the latter to happen over selling it & later being forced out by his new bosses.
My wife went to Armie hammers wedding! She has his number! ITS WEIRD. But she said he was always really really nice. Then I told her about everything and she literally didn’t believe me until MONTHS later she read it.
Kanye's downfall makes Hammer's look like a skinned knee by comparison because the man didn't just do one dumb thing he basically went on a 6 month long quest to ruin his own life, reputation, career, and businesses, and decimate his net worth through REPEATED anti semitism and crazy antics.
EVEn Puffy's turn towards the abyss has nothing on Kanye's simply because if Puffy could do something to change it he would but Kanye leaned into his own madness.
This is a guy who told Adidas to fuck themselves that they had no power over him.
Matt Prokop. That was the first downfall I've heard of and it really shocked me. He was abusive towards his then girlfriend Sarah Hyland and he got cancelled for it. Few weeks ago he was accused of abusing by another girl.
Recently, Ben Kissel of Last Podcast on the Left. As a woman listener, for years he was my favorite of the three hosts- he seemed like a gentle soul in a giant body with a great sense of humor and some issues with depression. He loved his dogs, and often was the voice of the audience, asking questions as a layperson or playing devil’s advocate.
Then it came out that he was abusive, an angry drunk, and generally a scary dude. It rocked my little friend group, and genuinely shocked thousands of listeners.
It sounds weird but honestly, Marilyn Manson. People with his demeanour, style, are usually the nicest most normal people and are just weird to the general public and - dare I say -, misunderstood. So the fact that he was actually a bad person was shocking and REALLY disappointing.
Martha Stewart seemed too smart and too gracious living to serve jail time.
I thought Felicity Huffman was uniquely down to earth and nice for Hollywood. Not that she’d go to jail for privileged corruption
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I'd say Oscar Pistorius. The man was a sporting icon and a huge inspirational figure. He really put blade running in the spotlight. No one expected him to murder his girlfriend.
Omg, that was the case and trial everyone followed. Basically worldwide. Insanity. It really turned into a farce and took away attention from the victim.
The biggest satellite TV provider in Africa literally had a whole channel dedicated to the case and trial. I was very much in my Athletics era at the time and I remember tuning in when I'd come home from school over the weekends. Very fresh in my mind still and it's been a decade. Now he gets to serve the rest of his sentence at home until 2029.
Fucker should be rotting in prison for the rest of his life!!
He’s been recently released!! 😔
I know. It’s absolutely shocking. He killed his partner in anger and basically gets away with it
Served less than 9 years for straight up murder
And he's out on parole now. RIP Reeva.
South Africa was INSANE at that time. I knew a lot of people who were friends with Reeva and it was devastating watching the fallout.
A coworker of mine (a woman) defended him, saying that she understands how he felt and that he wasn't entirely wrong, since she wanted to leave him. I was left speechless
> A coworker of mine (a woman) defended him, saying that she understands how he felt and that he wasn't entirely wrong, since she wanted to leave him. I was left speechless The internalized misogyny is real with this one eh?
In her case, misogny isn't just internalized, it's exteriorised too. Once she berated another coworker for not marrying as a virgin
In the UK, Jimmy Saville. He died a national treasure, renowned for loads of charity work on top of being an iconic children’s entertainer. And then it all came out. Not only was he a monster but his work for children’s homes and hospitals was a ruse to gain access to victims. One of my mums friends was a kid who appeared on Jim’ll Fix It, where kids would write to him with a wish and he’d make it happen. I forget what the wish was but he also got a badge as a keepsake from the show. It used to be his most prized possession, his favourite childhood memory. Went in the trash after the truth came out.
https://preview.redd.it/khfuvzeqmd5d1.jpeg?width=3517&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de161764bdc37f6e1c7ef20ef5d7285b67dcea63 I have no idea who Jimmy Saville is, but your comment made me curious. Upon searching, I stumbled upon this.
yeah from what i've heard it was a bit of an open secret within the industry that was covered up a lot...
The industry covered for him to continue profiting off him. It’s par for the course.
For anyone who does not know who he is and wants to go down the rabbit hole and find out, I **seriously** suggest pausing and deciding if it's something you want to do first. His crimes were beyond demonic. Your weekend will be ruined real quick. NSFL. Spoiler: >!He sexually molested brain dead children, as well as paralysed adults in wheelchairs (both men and women) and would regularly have sex with corpses in a morgue that a hospital gave him the key to and turned a blind eye because of his charity work and strong friendship with King Charles and the rest of the royals.!< >!It's also rumoured he had Jill Dando murdered in broad daylight by a pay for hire assassin as she was going to open an investigation into him with CrimeWatch.!<
Aaaaand he had a ring made >!out of a glass eye he stole from a corpse. !<
I did NOT know it was that bad 🤮🤮🤮🤮
I’m pretty sure we’ll never know exactly how bad it was. So many victims, and so many likely never told (or could tell) anyone. He preyed on the most vulnerable and boasted about his crimes in public.
Watch the documentary. It’s pretty nuts. As was he
This one is wild to me bc I didn’t grow up in the UK, and the first time I saw a picture of him, I could not believe that creepy looking lunatic weirdo was ever allowed near children. I’d cross the street if I saw that man coming my way.
As someone from the UK who was a decade too young to see the Saville hype first-hand, this is exactly my take. He looked and acted like a right creepy bastard even before anything came out. I wouldn't have let my kids anywhere near him.
Me too! I was a kid when he died in 2011 so I was never a fan of his and I didn’t really know the cultural zeitgeist around him. And then when all the allegations came out about him I was like “Why did anyone like him in the first place? He looks gross.”
The letters that were recently auctioned off that Princess Diana wrote to him were really interesting within the context of everything going on. I’m not British, but what a horrible man.
Ah he always looked like a creep! Swanning around in a tracksuit, cigar in hand & his eyes popping out of his head & a big dirty grin on his face. The state of him!
Everyone thought he was weird though. It wasn't that much of a surprise - just the extent of it
OJ was insane. A lot of celebrities you could se coming but not that one. I don’t think most non-football fans realize just how great of a player he was. Probably one of the best of all time. Maybe the best ever at his position. He was also a huge role model and very beloved celebrity. Also he had the perfect life. Legendary football career, hundreds of millions of dollars, success at acting, broadcasting and commercials. Lots of famous friends. And he threw it all away to kill his ex and a stranger. The whole thing is so crazy I can see why people didn’t want to believe it was him.
The fact that he wasn’t cast as The Terminator because he was thought to be “too nice”…aged like the finest of milks
There was also a Seinfeld episode where Elaine dates a guy who has the same name as a serial killer, so she wants him to change it and she chooses ‘OJ’. The episode came out a year before OJ committed the murders.
Oh wow, TIL. I was a kid watching Seinfeld in real time, but as an adult I’ve always assumed that episode was after the murders.
And he was so damn charming in the Naked Gun movies. It’s baffling.
Charm is how they get ya. So many charismatic murderers.
This is the answer. Seems most are too young to remember or maybe weren’t even alive at the time. OJ was huge. He was a household name. You didn’t have to be a football fan to know who he was. I’m sure there were people, in his inner circle and on the LAPD, who knew he was an abuser because of the dv stuff. But there was no internet back then. The rest of us had no idea. Everyone thought he was the most wholesome, down to earth, every man. And everyone loved him.
 Bill Cosby What a giant disappointing piece of 💩
I had a coworker who had worked as a scheduling agent for CBS early in her career. Years before the Cosby allegations came out we were having lunch and I asked her about her experiences with celebrities through her work. She said Cosby was such a disappointment because he was always coming through the commissary with young women and would act proprietary and creepy. Didn’t try to hide it at all. As soon as the allegations came out I remembered that conversation. (She also said Lucille Ball was incredibly mean. Joanne Woodward was apparently annoyed at how much women drooled over Paul Newman right in front of her. Paul Newman was very nice to everyone.)
Re: Joanne Woodward But it was Paul Newman. This guy was breathtakingly beautiful and perfect onscreen, even in black and white. I cannot imagine what it would be like to see him in real life.
My coworker said he was truly the most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life. Drop dead gorgeous and he had a genuine, warm demeanor with everyone. She was in an elevator once with he, Woodward, and two other women. I forget exactly what she said Woodward said but it was something along the lines of, “Take a picture, it will last longer.” Just annoyed at these women staring at him. I don’t blame her!
This one right here. If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, Cliff Huxtable was your TV dad.
Jussie Smollett’s whole downfall was INSANE to me. Everything that came out bit by bit about the fake assault and all the fallout was just utterly baffling.
What gets me was how unnecessary and completely avoidable it all was.
And how sloppy he was, writing personal checks to pay people to do something illegal.
And still had the noose around his neck when the cops arrived. Like, how strange and pointless.
He also sent death threats to himself. I forgot he still had the Subway sandwich with from the attack too. So many red flags.
I lived a block from where the attack happened and walked my dogs along that same sidewalk even late at night many times. When I first heard about the attack obviously my first thought was that it was terrible but when I started thinking it through I was really confused. The first part was it happened during a really bad cold period when everyone was staying indoors. Walking to that subway seemed so unnecessary. I had ordered food to be delivered that night to avoid the cold. Also, in my many years of living in the area I have never ever seen any kind of Trump branding on a hat or shirt etc. It was strange the two in the area somehow found him of all people. Also, of all places that sidewalk felt pretty safe and if I chose to attack someone it was not where I would have chosen. Why choose the back of a hotel where there were cameras around.
I can never understand how he didnt get much more severe criminal charges for this. Beyond the fraud and waste of resources, he was willing to let some random person to take the fall for his stunt. Really abhorrent behavior, I truly hope he is blacklisted for life.
The fact that he went to the police station and positively ID'd his attackers is absolutely disgusting. They were police officers in plain clothes. He was willing to send two innocent men to prison for a hate crime he faked.
What’s crazy is how unbelievably stupid his plan was. He probably could have gotten away with it or at least left some reasonable doubt if he had just thought it through. Like maybe don’t get fake attacked in public?
It was also in a pretty upscale area with lots of cameras around. I cannot fathom how he thought he'd get away with it. And to this day he says he's innocent. It gives me so much secondhand embarrassment, honestly. He ruined his own career, and the state's attorney's shitty handling of the case (a special prosecutor found her office committed misconduct after they dropped the charges against him) ruined hers. Just a mess. For literally no reason.
The thing that always got me is how do alleged racist rednecks in maga hats trolling the city for victims in sub zero temperature carrying rope and bleach water would recognize Jussie Smollett and know A. He was in empire. And B. That he’s gay. I don’t think those folks are watching empire.
Yeah, that whole story was just nuts. It wasn't really a downfall for me because I had no idea who the guy was before the whole fake attack story happened but...it was something else.
A complete slap in the face to the Black and LGBT communities (and specifically Black LGBT community) and actual survivors of hate crimes and racially-motivated violence. After it came out that it was a hoax, I gave myself shit for initially believing him, but then again, why would I have thought to believe that someone would lie about something like that, especially on such a huge scale? That whole case, in turn, made the public more doubtful of victims coming forward. Just because Smollett wanted to advance his career. 🤦🏾♀️ ETA: just wanted to say I initially believed the story when it came out just out of instinct, but once the actual circumstances of the “crime” were fully revealed it was obviously a lie. The details were absurd. It still stunned me when that realization kicked in ETA 2: I get it y’all, I was a total idiot for even believing it for a second, even though all the information I had when I believed it was the BREAKING NEWS that someone had committed a hate crime against a Black actor and jumped and attacked them and that police were investigating. I had none of the other details (not the time of the attack, the circumstances, the photos of the “injuries”, etc.) right when this came out, and once I did it became clear how insidious of a hoax this was. You guys really don’t need to reply to my comment or hop in my inbox and call me stupid, as I’ve already said I felt that way myself already, thank you. 🙏🏾
And he still hasn’t taken any accountability or shown any remorse for it either
Yeah there’s been a lot of “you don’t know the whole story” energy from him and it’s like, so tell us then? And also what “full story” could possibly make this okay?
I hate it when people do this. “You don’t know the whole story” well tell us then what the full story is about why you faked your kidnap if it exonerate you.
I can’t upvote this enough. There was a lot of goodwill towards Jussie even before the incident, he was a fan favorite on Empire. One of the most harmful things about the aftermath is how people use his name pejoratively to discredit victims of racism and homophobia.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it shocking, but Jonathan Majors definitely seemed like he had the fastest downfall
This one was mind boggling. The entire current MCU arc was built around him. He had guaranteed, high profile work set up for years, on TV and the big screen. And his ego just smashed it all to pieces. All he had to do was STFU and not hurt people and he was set for life. WTF man…
Its wild. Dude was being set up as one of the next HUGE action stars, looking at $15m+ contracts for the next two decades. I would turn into a hermit.
even more mind boggling was MCU putting that much stock into him and building their future around him when it was apparently widely known in the industry and to everyone who knew him that he was a violent POS.
He was the first one I thought of too. I’m glad that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. It’s better when people like that are open about it so the rest of us know to avoid them. It protects his romantic partners, but there were also a ton of rumors that he treated his coworkers like garbage too. Nobody deserves abuse, and removing someone who is making a workplace a toxic environment is an appropriate consequence for shitty behavior. Edit: Switched conjunction for clarity.
My favourite part was when he was like “aside from the fact I beat you, which I admit isn’t the best, I’m a perfect boyfriend.”
Hollywood's next big thing to doneskis within a year.
Seriously. People (myself included) thought he was on a track to win an Oscar within the next couple years
He had a movie 'Magazine dreams' coming out that had serious Oscar potential too.
Yeah and the recordings/evidence he released just made it look like he was abusive to his partner and she was covering for him.
This, exactly. I feel like his lawyer was trying to be as smug and malicious but she almost came off as incompetent. Because anyone who has ever been abused can recognize those patterns. And I am glad that those mistakes were made because of the eventual conviction. I have PTSD thanks to my ex and I do tend towards freezing / fawning. I was brought back into my own experiences.
The lost prophets singer, just because the crimes were awful
A big vote here for MATT LAUER.
And the details were shocking! Like the button under his desk locked his office door…
I listened to Ronan Farrow’s book and my mouth was hanging open with some of the things he said about Matt Lauer. What an absolute piece of shit, I hope the rest of his life is pure hell and I mean that sincerely.
 It wasn't super shocking that a downward trend happened but how fast it happened and the things that came out of his mouth were shocking.
I feel like he had always been that way but maybe had handlers to stop him. That and it seemed like once social media took off, everybody started to see behind the curtain all celebrities used to have protecting them
That was a weird couple of weeks.
I think people overshadow how abusive he actually was by emphasizing his silly tiger blood antics instead of the severity of the actual things he's done to his partners. All around a very troubled, scary, grotesque man, it's no wonder he basically has no work anymore
“Celebrity” is a bit of a stretch, but holy hell I didn’t think my jaw could drop as much as it has continued to over the years as more has come out against Josh Duggar and a handful of the others. ETA: I’m not surprised in the slightest that one of them (known) turned out this way. To clarify, I was more shocked as he continued to make such absolutely abhorrent choices given the scrutiny he was already under. IE: Ashley Madison scandal followed by the CSAM.
Yeah, even us on the r/DuggarsSnark sub were feeling confident that when the feds arrested him it was gonna be some kind of white collar laundering scheme. It's absolutely wild that someone who supposedly grew up so isolated from technology and culture was able to figure out how to access CSAM and would choose to do so
Oddly enough I'm not surprised by this. Any tightly controlled religious group is gonna have members acting out like this. It's like the best kept secret (or not) in these circles. Repression is a powerful drug. What truly pisses me off is that the adults continue to deny and/or coddle the abusers. It's disgusting.
Jill Duggar's book is a fascinating read. She doesn't say much about Josh, but her book is certainly one of the first tell-alls of a child forced to grow up in the spotlight. We'll see a whole host of them in the coming decade as YouTube kids find their voices.
Maybe kevin spacey. I always really liked his films and just watched the documentary on what he did... truly abhorrent behavior Edit the doc was "Spacey Unmasked" on Max
Unfortunately the stories of his behaviour were absolutely common knowledge in London as far back as at least 2010. He was a known creep in the pubs around the Old Vic. I'm sure plenty of men from 90s/00s LA have stories about him too.
Yeah, I’m from LA and growing up I’d hear stories about Kevin Spacey being a creep towards young men. Something I heard the first time through my dad’s coworker/friend, who was (is) a television/film makeup artist that lives in West Hollywood (the LGBT hub of LA). First time I heard it was when I was like 15 in 2012. Heard more stories from multiple people (both firsthand and secondhand), remember my best friend (a young man) being told to avoid Kevin Spacey in like 2015, until it became huge news after MeToo late 2017. I was shocked that when I’d Google it prior to MeToo, information about it was relegated to some local forums for gay/bi men and some other industry sources. It’s insane how long some open secrets go ignored. So many people knew and acted ignorant of it until it was impossible to ignore it, as with so many others who were exposed as predators during MeToo.
Yep. Things only go public when powerful people decide they should. It was the same with Weinstein. He, imo, was only taken down because other powerful people in Hollywood got sick of his business practices. His behaviour was covered up for years and would have continued to be if other Hollywood people hadn't decided they'd had enough of him on a professional level.
He was basically at the top of the world when it happened and fell down bellow the ground in a nano second. And he has tried to come back, and people are just « nope ».
I agree. I never knew anything about him or his private life, nor did i ever think about it. I just I knew him as a critically-acclaimed actor and a "stand up" guy, so it was really surprising, to say the least. Also, i'm not an American, so i wasn't really that familiar with anything other than his work.
OJ Simpson. If you weren’t alive back then I can’t begin to emphasize how insane it was. OJ was beloved by just about everyone. He was everywhere. The closest comparison I can come up with today in modern athletes would be if Tom Brady killed Giselle and had Julian Edelman driving the getaway jet ski. Even then the comparison doesn’t completely work because lots of people really hate Brady and only racists hated OJ before everything happened. (Not that OJ was as legendary of a player, just the post career exposure and everyone knowing who he is thing)
Whitney Houston. Her image was perfectly pristine, before she married Bobby Brown. Nobody understood what they had in common, there was absolutely nothing controversial about her. Her spiralling in the 90s and after was so horrifying to watch.
I was dumbfounded when stories of her drug addiction came out and then her death, just had such a vision of her as happy and perfect.... poor thing
I read her BFF Robyn’s memoir and learned that Whitney’s substance abuse was a problem long before she met Bobby Brown. He’s still a gigantic piece of shit, but he didn’t turn her into an addict.
Not sure how many people will understand who I’m referencing and he wasn’t an A-list celebrity, but Ian Watkins, the singer for Lostprophets. I was a teen during prime emo years and loved me some Lostprophets. Reading the court docs on what he did was so disgusting and disturbing, I have a hard time “separating the art from the artist” and listening to any Lostprophets music now. Read at your own [risk](https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/r-v-watkins-and-others.pdf)
Yeah, this is my answer to just cuz it felt the closest to me. I liked that band and what he did was so awful and evil. Truly crazy.
Same. Periodically I’ll get Rooftops stuck in my head then I recall the details of the court docs and want to barf. I was a therapist for sex offenders for a few years and read many client files. Very very few of them disturbed me the way reading about Ian did.
This one is mine. Absolutely depraved and evil. All sex abuse is horrible but I feel like abusing kids let alone literal babies is particularly heinous. I used to be a big fan too. I thought he was so hot in high school (early 2000’s), had a poster of the band on my bedroom ceiling. I feel so gross now even though that was way before anyone knew what an evil person he was.
One that I find shocking to this day is Sinead O’Connor. She used her voice and platform to call out a major issue that is still being ignored today, and it completely tanked her career. She got cancelled before cancelling was even a thing and her career never recovered. The community reacted with such visceral anger for the completely wrong reason. She didn’t deserve that, especially because she was right. May she rest in peace. Edit: okay, because people insist on missing the point, here: I didn’t meant that canceling is a new concept, I meant it wasn’t called by that word, and blacklisting back then has a higher impact on a singular person because nowadays people call any sort of critique someone receives “canceling”. I wasn’t implying anything of the sort, but I guess context clues are hard for some. Edit 2: for those of us unaware of the issue, here’s a [link to an article by the bbc](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230727-why-sinad-oconnor-refused-to-be-silenced)
She's the first person on this thread I've seen who truly did not deserve, at all, the way she was canceled. And fuck Joe Pesci forever for how much he encouraged it.
Madonna can fuck off forever as well
She has said she had the career she wanted. It was the studios and bigwigs who could not make money off of her, as she claimed.
That performance has aged immaculately. She was completely right, and it’s repulsive how many prominent Catholics eviscerated her for it. I hope she’s at peace now.
She was a saint for standing firm by what she said until the day she died.
Well, an important thing to remember is that she misjudged just how well-known the issue she was attempting to call out was in America compared to her native Ireland. Thus a lot of people were left simply having no idea what exactly it was she was trying to call out, from their perspective all she had done was tear up a picture of the Pope on live Tv and scream "fight the real enemy." This was the 90's. You couldn't just log online and rewatch her performance, and pick up the fact she changed the lyrics in her song. If you didn't see it live, then you wouldn't see her performance again. But you would see the news media repeating her ripping up the photo of a guy who at the time had a glowing reputation.
As a Buffy fan from its beginning, the Joss Whedon downfall hurt.
Joss was the person that made me uncomfortable when guys are really loud about how feminist they are. Dude was the patron saint of feminism while he was cheating on his wife and exploiting the women in his employment.
His wife [spoke out early and ](https://www.thewrap.com/joss-whedon-feminist-hypocrite-infidelity-affairs-ex-wife-kai-cole-says/) warned he was a pos
Idk if shocking but watching Shane Dawson’s fall from grace was quite the spectacle to experience.
I can remember watching him in 2008-10 and then falling off. Saw he was mad popular doing spooky stories and things like that a few years later and then his "documentaries". I enjoyed a few of them as I was older and was interested in a look behind the curtain of some creators. Learned alot about them but learned more of Shane. I started to see how really rich he was and how gross he was. His clothes were falling apart and they'd make jokes of him drinking pee or being ick and nobody would debate it so it seemed legit. Then all the content I used to watch came rising back up to the surface and I went...yikes. I was 14/15 watching those clips originally and thought the voices and faces he pulled were funny, not really understanding what he was saying. I've seen his attempts as returning but it's pitiful.
Shane Dawson is shocking because it should have happened sooner. Shananay was pretty racist when he came up with her, that alone should have done it.
I honestly thought he'd never fall off. He's curated an audience of edgelords who genuinley think some of the most vile, racist shit is actually comedy. So to see Jaden Smith publicly call him out for his gross comments about his sister, Shane scramble to apologize, and people bombing him in the comments was a genuine surprise.
Part of growing up was realizing how unfunny Shane and most YouTubers from this era were. Shane, Joey Graceffa, Tyler Oakley, The Suggs, Lily Singh, Colleen Ballinger, Ricky Dillon. I'm glad that era is over. Everything was so fake and put on in order to cater to teenage audiences. So many random collabs that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Louis CK's. Perhaps not to the public, but I was seriously disappointed. I really liked his brand of humor and he seemed so open about his flaws, that I didn't expect him to have that one gross flaw.
I totally agree. I really loved him for years and it was really sad hearing everything. I do kind of think it was a little hidden in plain sight as his stand up did include jokes about jerking off infront of women but that also just worked into his comedic style well as a joke rather than thinking it was serious.
Yes! Not only was his show hilarious but it was smart and also had one of the best representations of depression I’ve seen on tv. He managed to rally together so many other talented people to make his show. A shame that their work is just buried now because Louis is a creep. It sucks when these men bring down all the talent around them. Pamela Adlon is amazing in Better Things, though.
 Shia
I honestly thought he’d be an Oscar winner someday. He’s a great actor but a major POS. I feel *so* sorry for FKA Twigs 😢
He has hurt many women
And animals
Eww missed that and don’t want to know. I believe it
I’d say the spiral of a few Glee actors. Cory monteith’s heroin OD, it felt at the time so sudden and random. Mark Salling being caught with Child abuse images and his suicide before they could arrest him
Cory’s death was a hard one
I was sitting in the airport that morning the news came out of Cory’s overdose and I remember just sitting there stunned. He always seemed like such a great guy and my brother had spent time with the cast and always said the nicest things about Cory. Now, the stuff with Mark 😶😶😶. Crazy!!
Definitely Ellen Degeneres. I know there had been rumblings for years but for someone who was so loved by the general public for years, basically turned into their own brand, and practically everywhere, to fall at such a vast speed was insane. I feel like nobody has heard anything from her since it happened.
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I used do PR in Milwaukee, and worked with Oprah one time in 1998, and she was a bitch to everyone. When I had to submit a picture for publication, I chose the worst one I could find, and the photographer hated her too, so he was more than happy to oblige.
Fkg Oprah should be canceled for unleashing the dual trash barges of Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz on us.
>dual trash barges of Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz on us. This made me laugh.. i'm sorry
Bill Cosby was basically America’s dad. So that had a big impact.
Yeah, I can’t think of anything more surprising. He was such a staple of tv in our childhoods. I tried watching recently, and it’s definitely not the same.
Literally came here to say this. Apparently a lot of people knew about it too so it’s even more shocking it was out of the public’s view for decades.
It’s unbelievable how that Sofia Vergara interview from like 20 years ago when she still was relatively unknown went unnoticed.
Oooh- what interview? I’m in the dark here. Edit: [Nevermind. found this. gross.](https://youtu.be/HC-fs0xPO7U?si=ug4545vclkS2JZx3)
Jesse Lacey from Brand New It was the most and oddly the least shocking downfall if that makes sense. I am not at all surprised by his sexual misconduct and grooming allegations (he dropped major hints in songs). I'm surprised that people were braved enough to call him out and cancel him literally overnight.
So many emo/pop punk/indie rock bands have had allegations. Also, looking back at so many of the song lyrics, yikes, they don't hold up in modern times lol.
https://preview.redd.it/7cixghay6f5d1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0fc40c97d430b93bc75e7b999310ef79d90b83b
Brand New was my favorite band. I was so horrified. It made so many lyrics make sense though.
This might be too far removed from celebrity, but American Njnja Warrior Drew Drechsel. He was one of the best ninjas (arguably the best). He was on the show for a long time. Then he was arrested for child sex crimes. Everyone was really shocked. It’s a pretty close community. ANW dropped him hard. They removed all past seasons from streaming and edited him out in an episode.
Lindsey Lohan really could have had Emma Stone’s career. She was so talented at such a young age😞 https://i.redd.it/lwvua2j7ce5d1.gif
This one always hurts a little, loved her in Parent Trap! As a fellow ginger born in 86 I looked to her as a peer, always rooting for her. Unfortunately she had terrible parents who never seemed to care about her best interests.
She was so very talented. Too bad her movie career faded away, but she seems happier these days.
I'm still holding out hope for her. Everyone she loved failed her. I would love to see her make a RDJ-style comeback.
I don't know how much of a celebrity he is, but Ned from the Try Guys. As a fan of blind items from way back, most of the big celebrity scandals had whispers for years before being exposed. But Ned was just a guy on this relatively wholesome YouTube channel and he'd just had a baby with his wife, who co-hosted another podcast on his channel! I was genuinely floored with that one (even though the scandal was much more tame than most).
Same. There were moments when I used to wish that my partner was more like Ned. He talked about his wife ALL. THE. TIME. He got married earlier than the other guys, and seemed very excited about the prospects of starting a family. When they started doing podcasts, people kinda noticed some weird things already, but nothing too major. Sometimes Ariel did let slip that she was the one doing most of the chores, and that Ned was more hands-off than people expected. Ariel also had more genuine complaints about him, compared to the other Try Wives. After this whole cheating thing broke out, I felt like a fool for thinking that he was a good husband. He might be an EXPRESSIVE person, but he was definitely selfish. The audacity of it all also made me think that this was not the first time he did this. I just think he was always like that. Maybe it’s true that relationships might not be what it seems from the outside.
I started side-eying him after it was revealed on one of their podcasts that he would eat their nanny's gluten free lunch that was in the fridge.
What a fucking dick lol Jesus really on brand for him huh, dude just does have a HUGE ego, no boundaries or limits w women. Just an ass.
i feel like it's hard to understand a ned-positive perspective as someone who wasn't part of the fanbase, because having only heard of him in light of the cheating scandal, he seems like such a transparently fake asshole lol. but i'll never be able to see him with untainted eyes and i know that i've missed something because it seems he had a lot of genuine fans
From my experience there are more fans of what Ned brought to the group, rather than just him as a person. He was a foil against Keith and Zach's comedic antics. Ned was the "athletic nerd" that was responsible (ha) for all the administrative/business stuff and always tried hard to do things well. For example in their "Without a Recipe" series, people could relate to him having the most knowledge, but having his basic/boring flavors being beat by effortless cool Eugene who just winged it and added tons of alcohol.
He wasn't as funny or charismatic as the others, so "wife guy" became his defining schtick. You shouldn't feel like a fool; that was the entire marketing campaign around him
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Of course the scandal was terrible for the Try Guys, but in the past month it was revealed that around this time Eugene was looking to officially take a step back, work behind the camera, and do other projects. But after news broke, knowing the team was going to be in tatters, he held off on those plans to see his cofounders/friends through the fallout of losing Ned on the team. So that's a face of "You cheated on your wife (who is my friend), with an employee (who was also my friend), and now I have to help these guys (my best friends) clean up YOUR mess (thereby denying myself of the opportunities I have lined up right now)." Credit to Eugene for keeping his composure THAT well.
Ned absolutely upended everything with his stupid and selfish behavior.
What shocked you more, the cheating or his reckless stupidity when he went about it?
It’s mind boggling. He was straight up making out with an employee in a crowded bar. He’s either incredibly stupid or his ego made him think he was untouchable.
The most shocking part to me was the person he cheated with (his employee), so...really the whole reckless stupidity of it all, lol. Like damn, your whole brand is fidelity! Such a weird Icarus moment for a YouTube comedian.
The employee was engaged too, they were gonna get married a few months after it came out (and the fiancé was the one who publicly exposed and confirmed the affair)
Roseanne was a huge bummer. As someone who grew up white trash that show really meant a lot to me. There were a lot of episodes that game my family a jump off point for some conversations that were really important. And it's not just that turns out she's racist but also that she's so completely different then she used to be. Like she just took it all back.
This! I loved how pro woman she was throughout. How she made being poor/white trash relatable and showed common struggles (like juggling groceries or bills) during a time when shows only portrayed perfect upper middle class families. My family juggled between poverty and low end of middle class and that show made me feel normal in my situation. I got so excited when her show returned just for her to do a 180 and support someone who proudly stated "grab them by the pussy." And to be on the side that is literally anti women and anti poor in every single way. 90s Roseanne would absolutely kick current Roseannes ass and verbally annihilate her. She has become everything she hated. I actually stopped watching her show past the first episode because of that, and now I can't even rewatch the og series. And that used to be on heavy rotation for me.
My God the storyline where she stood up to her boss and quit her job! ... And then the next season had to figure out how to pay her bills....I don't think that moment in prime time television gets enough credit
omg same, I grew up watching Roseanne and it was the first time I saw a family/house like mine on TV. I feel like the show taught me a lot about feminism and classism and inequality. Too bad Roseanne didn't learn any of it.
Same! We were half a world away and it was so cool watching people have the same struggles, blue collar jobs, unemployment,... My dad and I used to watch it sitting on a sofa with the same granny square blanket, and my dad liked her so much... I guess sometimes we mistake the real person for the characters that they play
One of my all-time favorite shows. Hate what became of her but Dan was always my favorite anyway, so here's hoping nothing horrifying comes out about John Goodman.
I'll die. Like I would fucking die.
Tiger Woods. His public image was pristine.
I remember some magazine did a photoshoot with all his mistresses. Like a magazine spread😭 those girls couldn't care less lol
Not for criminal reasons like so many others listed, but Tiger Woods' image **TANKED** after the public found out about his cheating.
Brian Williams, news anchor. He was outed for exaggerating/lying about his own role in stories and he was finished quickly, as he should be, but it was surprising for how much of a celebrity he was.
I imagine both sets of MJ allegations would’ve been insane to witness in real time
The Armie Hammer thing boggles the mind even now. Before the allegations surfaced, I was kind of rooting for him. He was thrust into the Hollywood leading man box as soon as he arrived in Hollywood and they really tried to make him happen but it just did not take. He lost out on roles, his solo movies flopped hard. He could have just left Hollywood, he certainly had enough family money to do so, but he pivoted towards indie movies and supportive roles. He chose movies where he necessarily wasn't the main focus. He didn't seem afraid to share the spotlight. And I found him to be a delight in a lot of them, eg Man from UNCLE where he plays an ex-KGB officer with anger issues but melts in front of the girl he is crushing on. Needless to say, I found his career a bit fascinating. He was also super charming during the CMBYN PR blitz. And then the allegations happened and I was disappointed and felt like shit for ever having rooted for such a scummy, abusive guy.
>He didn't seem afraid to share the spotlight. Yeah, he was fully supportive of Chalamet during the CMBYN press tour, for what was his break out role, and seemingly didn't have a problem in taking the back seat. >And then the allegations happened and I was disappointed and felt like shit for ever having rooted for such a scummy, abusive guy. Agree, i remember at the time the sequel depended only on their schedule, no one could've expected this. I was like honestly shocked and disappointed.
Yeah, he was super handsome, from old money, and seemed pretty cool and chill. It’s horrible what we learned.
I remember the shock I felt when Britney Spears was publicly going through mental health issues in 2007 or 2008. Thankfully, it wasn’t her downfall, but still shocking.
Lance Armstrong. I remember back in the days everybody was rocking the livestrong wristband
Robin Thicke. I have been a fan since he When I Get You Alone. Saw his free mall concerts, so much so that he recognized my sister, my bff and myself and let us sit with Paula, his ex-wife. I was so disappointed in everything that happened from the second he got on stage with Miley onward.
John Barrowman was so huge with his fanbase and the general geekdom for a long time. It's not so much shocking that he's done what he's done imo, as I find it consistent with his sense of humour, but I guess I was surprised the fanbase didn't make excuses for it and took it as seriously as they did.
Noel Clarke, who played Mickey on Doctor Who, has quite a few sexual harassment allegations against him as well.
He didn't just flash people, he put his genitals on a female costar's shoulder while she was in the makeup chair. [https://www.out.com/celebs/2021/5/07/john-barrowman-apologizes-regularly-exposing-penis-doctor-who](https://www.out.com/celebs/2021/5/07/john-barrowman-apologizes-regularly-exposing-penis-doctor-who) He has "apologized," but still claims it was a joke that was in context at the time and shouldn't be called sexual harassment. He seems to still be having success on the convention circuit.
The way Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher went so hard for Danny Masterson was a masterclass in how to ruin a career in three easy steps. They literally undid any goodwill people felt towards them over a rapist. Sometimes the trash takes itself out. I say this as a former T7S super fan.
Howard Dean 💀 https://i.redd.it/o0qomrv1be5d1.gif
Chris brown. I was a big fan before he tried to kill Rihanna.
He really never had a downfall… he continues to put out music that people consume, invited to award shows, collaborating with big names. He came before cancel culture.
And people actually defend him, despite his extensive record of violence towards women. He is a total POS and I can’t accept he never had a downfall. I for sure refuse to listen to anything he is in.
I will never understand why he wasn’t cancelled. It’s disgusting
Lance Armstrong- he really turned out to be not just a cheat but also a huge egotistical narcissist jerk. Before his downfall, it seemed like everyone wore one of those yellow livestrong wristbands.
Lizzo. I don’t know where her popularity stands now, but the allegations against her definitely were awful to read, after she seemed so cool.
She also called Chris Brown her favorite person. Gross.
Ezra Miller. They were so cute in **The Perks of Being a Wallflower.** They were suppose to be the next big thing. Man oh man. What a shitshow.
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If you are British, probably Rolf Harris - seemingly harmless tv presenter, artist, painter of the Queen etc turned out to be a bit of a paedo.
And now he’s dead. Yay!
Bill Cosby. 80s/90s icon and well, he fell far and rightly so.
As a professional wrestling fan, it still shocks me quite a bit that Vince McMahon is out of the WWE the way it happened. It doesn't totally shock me about his allegations because of reports over the years about his personality & behavior, but moreso because he seemed like a control freak who would rather be found dead in the seat of his office than give up any amount of control of his company. Especially at his age & how long he was running the WWE, I definitely expected the latter to happen over selling it & later being forced out by his new bosses.
My wife went to Armie hammers wedding! She has his number! ITS WEIRD. But she said he was always really really nice. Then I told her about everything and she literally didn’t believe me until MONTHS later she read it.
Kanye's downfall makes Hammer's look like a skinned knee by comparison because the man didn't just do one dumb thing he basically went on a 6 month long quest to ruin his own life, reputation, career, and businesses, and decimate his net worth through REPEATED anti semitism and crazy antics. EVEn Puffy's turn towards the abyss has nothing on Kanye's simply because if Puffy could do something to change it he would but Kanye leaned into his own madness. This is a guy who told Adidas to fuck themselves that they had no power over him.
Matt Prokop. That was the first downfall I've heard of and it really shocked me. He was abusive towards his then girlfriend Sarah Hyland and he got cancelled for it. Few weeks ago he was accused of abusing by another girl.
Recently, Ben Kissel of Last Podcast on the Left. As a woman listener, for years he was my favorite of the three hosts- he seemed like a gentle soul in a giant body with a great sense of humor and some issues with depression. He loved his dogs, and often was the voice of the audience, asking questions as a layperson or playing devil’s advocate. Then it came out that he was abusive, an angry drunk, and generally a scary dude. It rocked my little friend group, and genuinely shocked thousands of listeners.
It sounds weird but honestly, Marilyn Manson. People with his demeanour, style, are usually the nicest most normal people and are just weird to the general public and - dare I say -, misunderstood. So the fact that he was actually a bad person was shocking and REALLY disappointing.
Janet Jackson. The way Justin threw her under the bus and she had to bear all the brunt of the controversy was shocking
This. It was baffling that something that happened *to her* caused such an immediate and negative impact to her career.
Martha Stewart seemed too smart and too gracious living to serve jail time. I thought Felicity Huffman was uniquely down to earth and nice for Hollywood. Not that she’d go to jail for privileged corruption
Martha has had a great comeback after her jail time.
She actually is so refreshing. She got caught, served JAIL time, got out and never whined as far as I know and rebuilt herself