Meet the Web's 10 most hated people

The Internet may provide endless hours of productivity-killing diversion and free-ish pornography, but that's not all it offers. The Web also gives us a cloak of anonymity, allowing every man, woman, and child to expel anonymous bile on strangers—be they the real-life TV celebrities we can't stand, or infamous figures brought to the nation's attention via YouTube. Below, Radar's list of the 10 people the Web really, really loves to hate.

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10. RACHAEL RAY
The queen of quick cuisine—"Snapper in a snap," anyone?—has more than her fair share of real-life haters, but it's on the Internet where Ray inspires the most intense vitriol: A Google query for "Rachael Ray + hate" returns more than 600,000 results, most of which express just how much the poster would like to smack Ray upside the head with a rolling pin when she's trilling for Dunkin' Donuts or liberally applying EVOO to "You Won't Be Single for Long Vodka Cream Pasta" on 30 Minute Meals. The leading voice in the field is the eponymous "Rachael Ray Sucks," a LiveJournal community that has been trafficking in anti-Ray sentiment since 2003. The website's founder, Azraelle, has her own reasons for hatin' on Ray: "The thing that angers me the most is the fact that she uses onions in her 'dog-friendly' recipes. Onions are toxic to dogs, and it infuriates me that she is encouraging people to potentially harm their beloved pets," she says. "As far as her annoying quirks go, I hate how cumin is never just cumin; it is always smoky cumin. God, that rides a nerve."

Funny thing is, we actually hear that Ray, who can often be spotted chain-smoking and swearing loudly outside her studio in Chelsea Market, is surprisingly cool in real life. Proving, once and for all, that Internet popularity and quality as a real-life human being rarely go hand in hand.

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9. TONY KORNHEISER
In his capacity as Monday Night Football host, ESPN talking head, out-of-touch radio personality, and Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser has made a name for himself with his brand of funny-ish, if not totally revelatory, commentary. Not so funny, however, were comments he made earlier this year about the growing preponderance of sports bloggers. (Well, some people probably found him funny, but bloggers certainly didn't.) On his daily radio show, Kornheiser had this to say about sportswriters with a modem but no credentials from a legitimate media outlet:

"...They think they know what they're talking about, and they think they have sources. They have no sources. They make stuff up. They're toads. They're little toads. Actually, they're pimples on the behind of the greater body politic in this country and in this city. And because, because they have access to airwaves and three or four people read them, they think, 'Oh, I'm very important.' In fact, in fact, if a huge dumpster landed on their mother's house, and got all the way into the basement and crushed them, nobody would care. Nobody would miss them. They provide nothing good, no service that's any good at all. They, they are, they are, they are sucking mole rats, and that's the nicest I can be to them."

Given that ESPN personalities have made a habit of stealing material from such "sucking mole rats" and passing it off as their own, Kornheiser's rant didn't exactly go over so well on the Web. (That fact that his ESPN show, Pardon the Interruption, is essentially 30 minutes of inane blog-style banter doesn't help his case.) So he did what any reasonable person would do: He turned to the well-respected D.C. Sports Bog, name-checked a few sites he actually thought were okay, and then closed with the following, uh, apology: "So, to make a very, very long story short and wrap it up, I was not attacking all the blogs—although God knows I could if I wanted to—and they could attack me."

We'll give you one guess how that went over.

8. DAVID CROSS
David Cross had a modest dream: a country home in upstate New York where he and his dog, Ollie Red Socks, could retire after a long day spent making hipsters laugh. So when the Boston-born comedian, who created the short-lived, beloved HBO series Mr. Show and had a recurring role in the short-lived, beloved Fox series Arrested Development, was offered a big paycheck in exchange for a few weeks of work on the disposable kiddie flick Alvin and the Chipmunks, he put aside his artistic integrity and took the cash. To his Internet faithful, he might as well have been the Fox executive who pulled the plug on Arrested Development. Cross was immediately branded a "smug, condescending asshole," and "a huge prick" on The Onion AV Club's blog for taking the role (more than 300 commenters chimed in, most in agreement). His friend, comic Patton Oswalt, mocked him on his MySpace blog. (Patton, for his part, turned down Alvin but did land the highbrow Ratatouille. He was also kidding, though most readers didn't pick up on it.) When a flabbergasted Cross took to his own website to post a defense, citing his desire hang out with friends in L.A. and make enough money to purchase the aforementioned country house, he was subjected to another round in the Internet pillory. (A commenter on Defamer called Cross' mea culpa "the shittiest fucking defense since the Nuremberg trials.")

So, did he regret writing about the "small cottage on at least a couple of acres near some water" in his letter? "Well, I dunno," he told the New York Observer at the time. "The last couple days have been way less boring than they would've been."

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7. DAILY KOS, AKA MARKOS MOULITSAS
It takes a special breed of individual to get hated on by conservatives and liberals alike—only Michael Moore comes to mind—but you can now add DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas to the list. Conservatives have never shied from voicing their opinions about the left-leaning Kos—Fox News' Bill O'Reilly once noted that "the site sells hate, as does the KKK and Nazis," but recent events have raised the ire of Kos' liberal base as well. Just last month, supporters of Hillary Clinton called for a de facto strike of DailyKos over what they felt were "unfair writing conditions" (getting abused in the "comment" section of a highly trafficked site by Obama-ites is taxing on both the body and mind!). One blogger's post about "never writing again" unless everyone stopped being so damn spiteful had to be closed after 1,258 commenters piped up in just five and a half hours. Quel scandal!

Moulitsas himself seemed to enjoy the ruckus, telling ABC, "...I think it's great. It's a big Internet, so I hope they find what they're looking for," but he's certainly pissing off large chunks of his liberal fan base. "It's just not the open forum of discussion for liberal ideology it pretends to be," says one prominent political blogger of Kos. "If anything, it's helping to widen the rift within the Democratic party to the point where things are going to be a total clusterfuck come convention time."

6. THE ENTIRE CAST OF NBC'S QUARTERLIFE
NBC's decision to broadcast Quarterlife, the Web series about entitlement and ennui in the digital age produced by Thirtysomething creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, was hailed as a broad stroke of genius at the time. Sure, the show was rejected the first time around by ABC, but with no end in sight to the writers' strike, Quarterlife's decently sized online audience was large enough to convince NBC's Ben Silverman (he's young and hip, remember!) to give it a whirl. A perfect Cinderella story save for one minor detail: The attractive bloggers, writers, and aspiring filmmakers who populate the Quarterlife landscape represented the most odious, cloying ensemble ever put on network TV. Critics were almost unanimous in their judgment: "An insufferable lot for the most part," panned the Washington Post. "The most vanilla group of twentysomethings in captivity," said the Los Angeles Times. "Self-absorbed, self-satisfied and so convinced they know everything that they're seemingly immune to absorbing any life lessons," scolded USA Today. "A small culture of flat, irritating generational emblems," noted the Boston Globe.

Viewers agreed: Quarterlife delivered the worst in-season performance in the 10 p.m. hour by an NBC show in at least 17 years, and was canceled after one episode. The Chicago Tribune summed it up best: "[Quarterlife] may make you regret the creation of the Internet."

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5. MEDIABISTRO FOUNDER LAUREL TOUBY
When we asked media folks who they'd recommend for this list, one name popped up more than all the others combined: Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby. While many proffered the obvious superficial reasons ("I know it's dumb, but I cannot fucking stand the boas," snipped one magazine writer of Touby's signature sartorial affectation), the brunt of anti-Touby sentiment can reasonably be attributed to jealousy. After all, the 44-year-old Touby, who got job portal Mediabistro off the ground by cold-calling editors and begging them to come to her parties, dropped jaws all over town when she sold the company for a staggering $23 million (that's $23 million more than anyone who has ever taken a Mediabistro class would have expected). Not bad for someone who famously couldn't pick Mike Bloomberg out of a dinner party lineup.

Of course, Touby isn't the only one who made a quick buck off the Internet. She is, however, one of the few who gloated about her financial windfall in a national publication with an almost unconscionable lack of discretion. "I had all kinds of illusions about how far the money would go and what I would enjoy, but they're not true," Ms. Touby lamented to the New York Times back in December. "I thought, 'O.K., a car and driver and a new apartment and a whole new life.' In fact, I can only afford two out of three." Touby, of all people, should have known that a lot of desperate freelancers read the Times.

4. DAVID MOTARI, BEST KNOWN FOR THE POPULAR YOUTUBE CLIP "AMERICAN SOLDIER THROWS PUPPY OFF CLIFF"
Americans will forgive you for almost anything. Hell, R. Kelly was caught pissing on a 14-year-old girl on tape and everyone still ate up "Ignition (Remix)." As Michael Vick learned the hard way, however, there exists a solitary exception: caninecide.

At least the jailed Falcons quarterback didn't kill puppies on YouTube. That special distinction goes to David Motari, a 22-year-old Marine from Washington state. Some 150,000 people watched footage of an almost gleeful Motari take a hapless puppy by the scruff of its neck and fling it off a cliff in Iraq before the video was taken off the YouTube website. (4,000 people railed against Motari in the comments as well.)

Almost immediately, outraged Internet sleuths dug up Motari's name, address, telephone number, pictures of his car and home, and an account to his profile on the social networking site Bebo (the Digg thread devoted to Motari is the rather succinct "DAVID MOTARI MUST DIE"). The military was quick to condemn his actions, calling the tape "shocking and deplorable," but Motari, who had subsequently been moved to a base in Hawaii, had to be given extra security to ensure his safety. He has yet to be formally charged, though he could face a court-martial.

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3. JULIA ALLISON
This sex columnist turned bona fide Internet microcelebrity is a lot of things to a lot of different people. To the hundreds of thousands of people who see her discussing the latest celebrity foibles on cable news programs each morning, she's a peppy talking head for Star. To the editors of the New York Times, she's a webby incarnation of Carrie Bradshaw. To Los Angeles Times columnist/"humorist" Joel Stein, she's a "a genius". But to the vast majority of people (particularly those who comment on the snarky media sites that chronicle her every move), the 27-year-old brunette is perhaps the leading exemplar of a culture in which it is entirely possible—if not wholly desirable—to achieve fame and fortune without actually possessing any discernible talent. (At least in the traditional sense of the word "talent." Allison certainly is a supremely talented self-promoter.)

The degree to which Allison is hated for her position as the Paris Hilton of the media world is extreme even by the freewheeling standards of the Internet. (Herein is where we should mention that we know Ms. Allison and actually find her antics amusing. Mostly.) Two-sentence blog posts about her generate dozens of "MAKE HER GO AWAY" comments. (She won't.) Gawker readers treated a four-word post about the end of her blog like the Bush Administration treated the fall of Saddam Hussein. (Of course, Julia's absence, like peace in Iraq, was short-lived.) The fact remains, though, that each of the 284 overwhelmingly negative posts written about Julia on Gawker over the past three years have only served to raise her profile. It is not a stretch to say that Julia Allison rode the rage of the creative underclass to a cushy six-figure TV gig and monthly all-expenses-paid trips to St. Barts. Which, of course, makes everyone hate on her all the more.

Reached for comment, the eminently quotable, generally unflappable Allison had this to say to all her haters:

"Wow, you hate me! You really, really hate me! I have to say, I'm truly humbled by this honor. As everyone knows, achieving something like this is a group effort, so I want thank everyone over at Gawker and Valleywag, especially Emily Gould and Owen Thomas, you sexy bitches! I couldn't have done it without you! I want to thank my agent, who has been with me since I was just mildly annoying. I also want to send a special thank you to all the Gawker media commenters, especially those who incessantly referenced my sluttiness, STDs, propensity to gold-dig, show cleavage, and simultaneously say stupid shit! Of course I want to thank my self-promotional narcissism and my incessant desire for infamy at any costs. Thank you so, so much. Last but not least, I want to thank Nick Denton and God. That may or may not be redundant. THANK YOU! Goodnight!"

2. JOHN FITZGERALD PAGE
The transition of Page from cretinous but anonymous asshat to Worst Person in the World" is a case study in the perils of Internet dating, particularly if you are a self-absorbed blowhard with little sense of humor and less tact. The oafish Page, a balding Penn graduate from Atlanta, responded to a girl who "winked" at him on match.com by asking inquiring about her fitness regimen and asking for full-body pictures. When she reasonably decided that he was totally creepy and declined, he let her have it:

"You hit on me, and therefore have to impress ME and pass MY criteria and standards—not vice versa. 6 pictures of just your head and your inability to answer a simple question lets me know one thing. You are not in shape. I am a trainer on the side, in fact, I am heading to the gym in 26 minutes! So next time you meet a guy of my caliber, instead of trying to turn it around, just get to the gym! I will even give you one free training session, so you don't blow it with the next 8.9 on Hot or Not, Ivy League grad, Mensa member, can bench/squat/leg press over 1200 lbs., has had lunch with the secretary of defense, has an MBA from the top school in the country, lives in a Buckhead high rise, drives a Beemer convertible, has been in 14 major motion pictures, was in Jezebel's Best dressed, etc. Oh, that is right, there aren't any more of those!"

In a shrewd bit of payback, the scorned online dater sent Page's response to Gawker, which immediately posted the correspondence under the headline, "The Worst Person in the World." (The post generated an astounding 2,028 comments.) Everyone from CNN to the CBS Early Show followed suit—Fark actually had to shut down its forum page on Fitzgerald, it got so long—and thus the next Aleksey Vayner was born.

Page's attempts to convert his worst-person status into commercial success have fizzled, unless you count such endeavors as his recent guest appearance on an episode of Dr. Phil titled "Male Egos: Out of Control." He won't give up, though: Over at Esquire, you can vote for Page in the magazine's annual "Best Dressed Real Man" contest. He describes his personal style as "Gordon Gecko + James Bond + Italian designers." Unfortunately, he's not kidding.

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1. LORI DREW
You know you've struck a nerve with the Internet masses when your saga has been covered breathlessly by media outlets big and small, yet the first Google hit involving your name is titled "People You'll See in Hell." But that's what happens when you're an adult who maybe drove an adolescent girl to suicide. A fantastic account of the whole sordid mess can be found in the New Yorker, but for the uninitiated, the story goes something like this: A 13-year-old girl named Meghan Meier hung herself in the upstairs closet of her suburban Missouri home after receiving a bunch of nasty MySpace messages from a boy she had been corresponding with. Except the boy in question, "Josh Evans," wasn't actually a boy: He was the fictional creation of a woman named Lori Drew, the mother of a girl with whom young Meier had once been friends. Meghan and the friend had a falling out, as adolescent girls are wont to do, which prompted the girl's mom to punish Meghan by "friending" her as a 16-year-old hottie named "Josh Evans." Seemingly, Drew planned on toying with Meghan's emotions to teach her some sort of life lesson, failing to realize that 13-year-old girls are fragile creatures who don't take well to that style of teaching. Granted, it later came out that Drew knew Meghan had battled depression, making her cold "This isn't my fault and I had no idea this would happen" defense ring somewhat hollow. (To make matters worse, she even enlisted the help of another young girl to make the ruse more plausible.)

Interestingly enough, the St. Charles Journal, the paper that originally broke the story, didn't mention Drew by name, but a bunch of pissed-off bloggers eventually outed her. Drew hasn't yet been charged with a crime, but prosecutors are looking to see if her creating the fake MySpace account can be grounds for fraud. In the interim, congratulations, Lori! You are officially the most despised person in the whole wide web!