47 People Who Completely Ruined Their Lives In The Fastest Way Possible
Life can fall apart slowly over time. A few bad habits, even more bad decisions. Missed opportunities. Maybe the wrong crowd, coupled with some questionable relationships…
But other times, it only takes a moment for someone to completely wreck their life. Perhaps it was a poorly-timed comment, a “just-this-one-time” mentality, or even being caught unexpectedly on a Coldplay kiss cam. Whatever the reason, many people have managed to derail their lives at a speed, which is quite astounding.
Someone recently asked“Who ruined their life the fastest?” and the replies sped in faster than the resignation of Astronomer’s CEO Andy Byron. Thousands of people shared stories about years of stability unraveled in an instant.
From silly decisions that led to fatal crashes, acts of self-sabotage that had the worst consequences, and even dumb comments that sent careers spiraling out of control… Bored Panda has put together a list of the most sobering responses for you to scroll through while you think about your own life choices. Many might make you step with caution to avoid doing anything that could alter your path forever.
The pilot that allowed his children to play around with the plane, it crashed in just 3 min killing all 75 on board,
Aeroflot flight 593.
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Will Smith was 45 minutes away from accepting an Oscar before ruining his career and image.
Adam Osbourne, founder of Osborne Computers which made the first successful portable computer, made announcements about new computers that were still in the prototype stage. So people stopped buying their existing product, Osborne Computing failed by 1985, and they became a footnote in computer history.
But they did name The Osborne Effect after this blunder.
Not the fastest, but you have to credit Elon Musk for the sheer scale of his downfall.
He went from Silicon Valley’s darling genius that was going to save the world, to detestable technofacist and one of the greatest villains of this generation.
He is now the poster child of the ultra wealthy using their money to make our lives worse.
Boban Jankovic, professional basketball player, paralysed himself by banging his head against the hoop support in a fit of rage.
My son. Decided to hang out of a window of a Jeep while the driver was doing donuts in the sand. The car rolled, he was k**led, no one else was even hurt cause they were all wearing seatbelts. One person in the car was going to do it, too, but Sage said “no, it’s too dangerous.” The irony of the stupid little fucker’s comment is not lost on me. I miss him so much.
My older brother had a pretty epic collapse. He was waiting tables at one of the best restaurants in our city and was promoted to bartender and was being fast tracked to management. I know waiting tables and bartending doesn’t sound like a big deal, but he was making around $100k a year and only working about 30-35 hours a week. He bought a house, a new car, and had a dog. Then he got into drugs.
One week everything is great. The next week his roommate moves out abruptly. I’m guessing he had been spiraling without the family knowing, but she saw it all coming. She leaves abruptly, the car gets repossessed, and the bank seizes the house. He moved in with my dad, but after 2-3 days my dad puts him in the VA hospital. After a few days there he bounces out and declares himself a new man. Moved back in with my dad. After a couple of days there, he’s back at the VA, then out to basically a homeless shelter. This is all within like a 2-3 week span. That was 15 years ago. He’s been bouncing in and out of shelters in Baltimore and Boston since.
Justine Sacco’s tweet “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” ruined her life so fast, she was the last person to know.
Definitely my neighbor drove drunk with his whole family in the car and he crashed. He became paralyzed from the waist down his whole family was fine and they left him completey. F**k you niri.
Matt Lauer. Once was the face of NBC and the Olympics. Has a torrid affair and SA charges at work. Gone forever in a flash.
Greg Wallace
He presented MasterChef in the UK. Notice the past tense.
It came out that he said a few gross things to female contestants – including on the celebrity version.
Nothing actually horribly offensive, but definitely ‘pervy uncle’ territory.
But instead of apologising or even denying and playing down, he doubled down and having the gall to blame “women of a certain age” for complaining.
I ruined my.own life the fastest. I went to a doctors appointment for chronic pain, was prescribed opiates in about 5 minutes. That’s all it took to utterly ruin the great life I had and alter it.forever
Thankfully, I’m coming back strong now.
Simpson?
Dude was IT as an NFL player. Had a successful career as an actor in some way (Naked Gun, tv Ads etc….). Money never would’ve been a problem. Dude had a gravy train life set up for him and he fumbled it all.
A friend of mine was in college and had a great life until he decided to drive extremely drunk and got into a horrible accident. He ended up with many broken bones and a very expensive DUI case. He got expelled from college. He couldn’t find a job for years after that.
A patient I help treat sometimes. 5yo left unattended for a few minutes, proceeded to drink from a bleach bottle. Caustic burns destroyed their airway and oesophagus but managed to survive because of tracheostomies and feeding tubes. Parents penalised and the child placed into care. Child needs routine surgeries to fix the damage caused by the caustic burns, and because of their age all fixes are temporary because they’re constantly growing.
That guy who moved his family to Russia from the US because of radicalization and enlisted in the fight against Ukraine.
my friends who dont know how to save money. 3 kids, 4th on the way, fought his girl. now him and orher friend living in a garage sleeping on separate cots. they both just financed $20k buggy and $47k buggy off roading. they are paying $1200 total. Both trump supporters because he will fix the economy. while they both sleep in an apartment detached garage with rats 💀
Mike Lindell? Founder of mypillow who at worst was known for being a passionate but weird founder. His product was ok. His company seemed to be doing well.
He then endorses trump and triples down. People went from having no opinions on him to hating him. His company is failing.and it seems like maga support isn’t enough
Azealia Banks. Released a song that was played on near repeat in every club in 2012. Talk about how big she would become.
Went absolutely insane in interviews and social media and destroyed like 95% of her following and blacklisted from mainstream radios so never got much real coverage again.
Aaron Hernandez went from NFL star with a $40 million contract to convicted murderer serving life in prison in about 3 years. Then k**led himself. Absolutely spectacular self-destruction.
Velveteen Dream. Was literally IT in NXT. Future superstar, future WrestleMania headliner was what everyone talked about. Came out he was texting minors. Threw it all away.
plenty of good answers I see already, one I think of is Otto Warmbier. While I doubt we’ll ever know for sure what exactly happened, he made some small choice, whether innocent or foolish, that ruined and subsequently ended his life. I remember at the time of the incident he had the persona of a privileged twat who thought touring north korea would be a fun gag, and quickly FAFO’ed. Now its North Korea so how much of it was manufactured? IIRC the incident was that he tampered with a poster or something. that we’ll never know, but one could argue just being an American traveling to North Korea in the first place as a ‘tourist’ is asking for it.
Like Michael Carroll from the UK-at nineteen he won almost ten million pounds in the lottery,spent a few years on cars,parties and gambling and ended up broke and back to manual work.
My favorite ‘guy who failed the fastest’ is this guy I met in El Monte, CA, arrived to CSULA from Brazil on scholarship for engineering, saved up working under the table to buy a mustang, drove it fast around the industrial zone we worked in, faster and faster each lap, went over the curb, over the grass, car ended up on top of utility box, while I was working at Starbucks across the street from the landing zone.
Guy wasn’t hurt, but he got into all sorts of trouble, lost his scholarship, visa, chance at US education and deported.
Len Bias. A top 2 pick who was supposed to carry the Boston Celtics from one era to another but then just 2 days after he was drafted he OD’d on c*****e and died
El Pirata de Culiacán. He was recorded talking mess about a powerful cartel boss and shortly after he was k**led in a nightclub in Mexico. He was 17 years old.
The cop who shot the kid tamir rice 11 years ago now is one of the few police who hasn’t been able to escape their past as a shooter. He got fired as an officer after the shooting, and he’s continually tried to apply to new police stations and as a security guard to various places, his past keeps catching up with him, and people keep contacting his new work places, to keep him off the force, and to this day he has not been able to return as a cop
The singer Grimes. Completely destroyed and flatlined her decades-long music career and any prestige she had for a rich scumbag who cheated on her constantly and got other women pregnant while she defended him publicly 😂 Humiliation ritual fr.
An old friend of mine and his wife were having trouble getting pregnant. She kept having miscarriages, and the last one they had to remove a fallopian tube. She was understandably distraught by this and fled to Colombia. Totally mia for a few weeks. In that time this old buddy knocked up his neighbor. When his wife came home he said “see I’m not the problem”. Oof
Edit: to be clear they removed a fallopian tube from her.
probably me,
went on a strict vegan diet in my teens and stayed on it for 20years, had resulting chronic fatigue for 10 years could barely walk 1 minute before needing 10min rest.
slept 12-14hrs per day.
then it slowly improved a tad however i was still greatly nutritionally deficient by living maunly on just a little fruit for so long.
took me having life threatening issues before i finally tested meat again and then it went away.
however by that time already in 30s having wasted 2 decades.. am still far from recovered and battle ptsd anxiety attacks fatigue neurological and brain issues that made it impossible to work hence became homeless (this will be my 7th winter)
although i had to resist the overwhelming urge to unalive 1000s of times am still here with little hope but it is what it is. life isnt always roses, grace and angel dust however it sure grants us great lessons that hopefully others can learn from to enjoy a fuller life 🌼
Not super famous, but definitely notable. The streamer/youtuber Cryaotic.
Had a big following from his YouTube days. Did videos with PewDiePie before switching over to Twitch full-time. He would pull in a good 4000 viewers per.
Then, as I understand it, he started an antidepressant that altered his brain chemistry a bit too much, and he started seeing himself as an activist and hero.
Then he posts a YouTube video where he admits he groomed girls on the internet. Everything cascades from there and he disappeared off the face of the Earth.
A guy from my high school beat his mom to death. Not sure if you can say that was the moment his life was ruined because he was already arrested for playing with a gun in the house and grew up just as immature, but killing his mom was the point where he truly resigned all hope for a future.
Henry Ruggs III. He was driving pretty dang fast when he k**led that woman and her dog on his drink driving thrill ride. Knowing the NFL, he’ll still have a job once he gets out of prison. After all, “if Hannibal Lecter ran a 4.3, we’d probably diagnose it as an eating disorder.”
Kind of an old story, but Jimmy the Greek who used to be on the NFL pregame shows. Was at a dinner, had a few too many and, on camera, started talking about slave owners breeding “big blacks” with “big black women” to make “big, strong, blacks”. I’m paraphrasing, but it was career over pretty much overnight.
Howard Dean. Was well on his way to becoming the democratic nominee for president in 2004. He had a ton of momentum, polling looked great, the nomination was his for the taking. Then he gets on stage at a rally and in a fit of excitement lets out a awkward scream and overnight his campaign fell apart. It was one of the earliest “viral” clips on the internet. Late night hosts mocked it. Chapelle show spoofed it. He never came back from it. Poor dude.
My brother. Repeatedly hung out with the kids my mom and I told him time and time again that they were not good people and you’ll get in trouble.
Fast forward half a year later and he was arrested with those friends for robbing 3 liquor stores with guns. He only got off because he was what the cops called the bag boy who didn’t hold any weapon or hurt anyone. Well, that and I got him a lawyer who frequently represented organized crime members and got 99% of them off with a slap on the wrist. Him being white we were targeted by my brothers friends family and we were stalked, menaced and had weak molotovs and bricks thrown at our house. We were blamed for being racist and that’s why he got off not understanding that he didn’t even hold a gun, had no priors and his friends were known gang bangers who’ve been known to pressure others into doing things.
Well, anyway he now has a record that will follow him everywhere now.
Bud Dwyer former treasure. Shot himself on live tv. He ruined his life and told on most of the rotten people in his office. He also ruined live tv since after im pretty sure they started to delay most stations
A friend of mine decided that she was polyamorous. Her husband was supportive and she starting dating a married guy in another state, literally driving hours back and forth every other weekend to see him.
Out of the blue, after a few months of this, she says that she doesn’t feel attracted to her husband anymore and might want a divorce. He is blindsided and willing to work on the relationship (he did nothing wrong and had been nothing but supportive of her), and her friends all beg her to try counseling before going nuclear for no reason. She ignores this and divorces him, ruining both her and her husband’s life out of nowhere. She moves to the other state with the other guy and his wife, where she loses contact with her friends and family and basically becomes a mistress to him and watches the couple’s baby for free.
The poor husband was devastated. We’re still friends with him and he’s remarrying to a lovely woman, but I still mourn the loss of my friend who just fucked up her entire life to go be miserable.
My wife. She cheated. My youngest son is the one who found the evidence.
“Helping” her move out. She will know how much she fcked up next week.
Maybe not the fastest and the biggest ‘ruin’ but Machine Gun Kelly deserves a honorable mention.
He tried taking shots at Eminem and Em’s response made him quit rap and pursuit emo rock lol.
Thug in Limerick Ireland, showing off in front of young lad with a glock, blew his brains out because the gun was loaded and had one up the spout.
