Top 10 Celebs Who Destroyed Their Career With One Post
Top 10 Celebs Who Destroyed Their Career With One Post
Top 20 Celebs Who Destroyed Their Careers With One Post
Ah, the power of social media. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the Top 10 celebrities who destroyed their career with one post. For this list, we’ll be looking at famous people who tarnished their careers via a single social media post, with the celebs often also making other offensive posts as well that contributed to their self-destruction. This tarnishing doesn’t necessarily need to be permanent; the celebrity in question could have made, or can make, a comeback after some time away from the spotlight. As long as they had their careers ruined in some capacity, they are included.
#10: Amanda Bynes
We now know that Amanda Bynes is suffering from mental illness, but it took us a while. In the summer of 2010, Bynes announced that she was retiring. Fair enough. But just one month later, she was “unretired.” And then came the infamous Drake tweet. In 2013, Bynes controversially tweeted, “I want @drake to murder my vagina,” a tweet Drake referred to as “a little weird and disturbing.” The tweet garnered a lot of flak in the media, and some people thought it was a little too graphic. Even though she was “unretired,” Bynes’s reputation was in tatters. Later that year she was held for a mental health evaluation, and we all realized that this was far more serious than we originally believed.
#9: Iggy Azalea
During the height of her “Fancy” fame, Iggy Azalea came under attack for past tweets that many found to be both racist and homophobic, tweeting things like “When guys whisper in each others ears I always think its kinda homo.” The offensive and hurtful tweets did some irreparable damage to her career and reputation. She dropped out of a gay pride event in Pittsburgh and canceled her Great Escape Tour. Of course, the latter was “officially” cancelled due to Iggy needing a “break,” but most thought it was a combination of the Twitter backlash and poor ticket sales. Iggy’s second studio album, released in July 2019, only reached #52 in her native Australia.
#8: Perez Hilton
Hilton is certainly a controversial figure, but he crossed a line in June of 2010, when his personal Twitter account supposedly linked to an upskirt photo of Miley Cyrus. While the pic was quickly taken down, witnesses claim that it showed the 17-year-old Cyrus climbing out of a car without any underwear. Hilton faced immediate backlash, and many people questioned if he would be brought up on charges. According to criminal defense attorney Jeffrey Douglas, “All you have to do is knowingly distribute the photograph.” Hilton later defended himself, claiming that Cyrus was wearing underwear and that the controversy was “fake.” No matter. The damage to Hilton’s reputation had been done.
#7: Jason Biggs
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In the early 2010s, Jason Biggs made a bit of a post-“American Pie” comeback with roles in “Orange Is the New Black” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” However, a series of offensive tweets got him fired from the latter, after Nickelodeon featured his Twitter feed. Lo and behold, during the 2012 Republican National Convention, Biggs tweeted, “I’d totes dip a pinky or two in Paul Ryan’s wife’s bleached asshole.” Both Biggs and Nickelodeon were targeted by parental groups, and Nickelodeon reportedly told Biggs to knock it off. He didn’t listen and continued tweeting offensive things, which included digs at Malaysian Airlines and dead “Bachelorette” contestant Eric Hill. The continued controversy was too much for Nickelodeon, and they fired Biggs in 2014.
#6: Gilbert Gottfried
This legendary comedian and actor is known primarily for his signature grating voice, which has been used to great effect as Iago in “Aladdin” and the classic Aflac Duck. Unfortunately, he lost the latter commercial role after tweeting one, and then an extended series of very insensitive jokes following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011. The massive earthquake and resulting tsunami killed nearly 16,000 people and injured a further 6,157. People weren’t really in a laughing mood. And seeing as how Aflac does a huge proportion of its business in Japan, Gottfried was quickly and firmly dismissed by the company. So ended a decade-long iconic job, and a reputation.
#5: Azealia Banks
At this point, Azealia Banks is more famous for her social media presence than her music! In March of 2016, her second mixtape, titled “Slay-Z”, was released to the public. Just two months later, she found herself in hot water after aiming racist and homophobic tweets at Zayn Malik. This included calling him the ultra-derogatory f-word and a “curry-scented bitch.” Many called for comeuppance, and Twitter answered by blocking Banks’s account. She was also dropped by her UK booking agency. It significantly hurt her relatively young career, but it hasn’t stopped her from being provocative. For example, 2019 saw her calling Irish people “inbred leprechauns.”
#4: CeeLo Green
The Gnarls Barkley crooner was on top of the world in early 2010s. “Forget You” was a massive worldwide hit, and he was serving as a judge on the enormously popular singing competition “The Voice.” And then he tweeted about sexual assault. He was accused of giving a woman ecstasy before sex, raising issues of consent. She claimed to have no memory of the night and resulting events, and CeeLo tweeted, “People who have really been raped REMEMBER!!!” Needless to say, that specific tweet (and its equally bizarre accompaniments) caused an enormous amount of controversy, and CeeLo was effectively canceled, at least for awhile. He subsequently made appearances on “Lip Sync Battle” and “The Masked Singer.”
#3: Anthony Weiner
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Weiner wasn’t an entertainment celebrity in the traditional sense, but he was a well-known public figure who had been in politics for many years. That career came crashing down in the summer of 2011 when Weiner found himself at the center of a highly publicized sexting debacle. On May 27, 2011, he accidentally posted a sexually explicit photograph of himself to his public Twitter account. The photo was obviously meant for a specific person, and Weiner was soon embroiled in a controversy that ended in him resigning from Congress. But it didn’t end there. In 2016 it was reported that Weiner had been sexting a 15-year-old girl, a fact that eventually put him in prison for fifteen months.
#2: Roseanne Barr
Barr probably holds the record for the quickest collapse after a comeback in television history. “Roseanne” was monumentally popular throughout its run from 1988 to 1997, and it was famously revived in the spring of 2018. The first episode of the revival aired on March 27, 2018. And just over two months later to the day, Roseanne called Obama’s senior advisor Valerie Jarrett a cross between the “Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes.” This incredibly insensitive and racist tweet was widely condemned, and “Roseanne” was canned the same day. Her career and reputation will never be the same again. Before we name our number one pick, here is an honorable — or dishonorable — mention: Vanessa Hudgens
#1: Kathy Griffin
Many people don’t like Donald Trump. But many people also thought that Kathy Griffin went too far by holding his mock-decapitated head. On May 30, 2017, Griffin posted a highly controversial photo of her holding a bloody mask meant to represent Trump’s severed head. While She claimed it was meant as an edgy artistic piece, some people interpreted it as an inappropriate threat of violence against Trump. Griffin was fired from numerous gigs, including CNN's annual New Year's Eve program, all of her tour dates were cancelled, and she was even placed under investigation by the Justice Department. The photo was widely lambasted and Griffin’s reputation was ravaged.
