40 Things That Were “Ruined For Everybody By One Person”

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It can take thousands, or even millions, of people to popularize something: a game, a hairstyle, a style of music. But unfortunately, it can all be changed in an instant, as it only takes one bad apple to turn something from fun and exciting to inappropriate (or even illegal).

One curious Reddit user recently asked others to share some of the things that one person managed to ruin for everyone else, so you’ll find their most relatable responses below. Enjoy reminiscing about "the good old days" before these things were tainted, and be sure to upvote everything you wish was still the same today!

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The female body image, by the Kardashians. Yes, I consider them all one person, since they all seem to have been built by the same plastic surgeon. Millions of girls and women worldwide seem to think that surgery, teams of hairdressers, nail and make-up artists, personal stylists, shapewear, Instagram filters and photoshop make them real women. That whoie family should be cancelled, instead they're billionnaires. Sign of the times ..

CutTheCrapDotCom , kimkardashian Report

Trash. American style.

Tipping. Businesses are pushing their customers to tip because they don’t want to pay their employees fair wages.

BoysenberryWilling94 , cottonbro studio Report

American thing

Twitter, by Elon Musk. Pretty basic, I know but geez. This man's just an arrogant child with waay to much money.

empty_skull_ , wikipedia.org Report

i didn’t think twitter could get worse. oh wait sorry, i mean “x” 💀

Vaccines by Andrew Wakefield. Thanks to that a*s hat we have way too many antivax idiots.

timberwolf0122 , cottonbro studio Report

And he was one of the people that invalidated his own statements. But by that time, the damage was done...

I hate to be dark but, as a gymnastics coach: people like Larry Nassar and my own coach As a gymnastics coach myself, I have to be extremely careful how I touch a kid in a sport where I have to….pick them up and move their body around and stuff. And obviously, I’d never purposefully put my hand in an inappropriate spot, but if I accidentally do while saving a kid from falling or something I have to profusely apologize and feel anxious. 99% of the time, the kid doesn’t even notice I grabbed them or something. Or, they don’t care because they’re happy I saved them from snapping their neck. Some gyms ban coaches from giving a kid a hug and whatnot. We have strict rules in the gymnastics world where two or more adults have to be with a kid if they are alone in the gym. Which hey, I support. When I train male coaches, I tell them to be extra careful since they are more likely to get accused. Groomers gonna groom, but if a guy accidentally brushes a girl’s boob when he spots her, it shouldn’t be world ending. With the abusers that people know of primarily being men, male coaches are watched like hawks. I can get away with a gaggle of little four year olds tackling me and laying on me for a group hug. A male coach has to be veeeery careful.But, it’s sad it has to be like that. I wish I could text a kid myself, set up a private lesson, meet them at the gym alone, we work on stuff, their parent picks them up. That’s not reality. People should just…not be weird to kids. Adults should be respectful and not abuse their privilege and a child’s innocence.Now, people have a terrible perception of the sport I love because of the abuse myself and others faced. And, I don’t blame them.

SandiRHo , wikipedia.org Report

The internet was ruined by whoever it was that invented pop-ups. And video ads, for that matter.

tc6x6 Report

The guy that invented pop-up ads, has made a formal apology. He didn't mean to ruin the internet.

A s**t ton of symbols have had their meaning completely changed because some mentally ill dude got rejected by an art school.

Ya_boi_excalibur , .wikipedia.or Report

my parents have a swastika in our house, not cause we’re nazis, cause it’s a common symbol from india. ( they brought it to the us) it’s disgusting how he stole it and turned it into something evil.

Telemarketing. Owning a phone used to be a good thing, now almost every phone call is some shady insurance scam or panhandler looking for money.

wkarraker , MART PRODUCTION Report

My Dad no longer answers the phone unless it's someone he knows.

The name "Karen".

hornypandey Report

I read that in 2021 zero people named their kids Karen, in Canada.

A small town permanently cancelled Halloween because one kid was bullied and the mother lobbied and won. Turned out the kid was not bullied but was stealing other kid's candy and they fought back.

The_North45 , Charles Parker Report

And again, not on that single woman. It's on people who don't want to tackle problems and willfully make the worst decisions to disencourage people from making legitimate complaints so they don't have to actually do their damn jobs

Sex ...by my kid.... wtf little dude. You can watch paw patrol for 2 hours straight but then I snatch yo momma in for a min and we can't even get through the warm up!?

DragontheeOnMeBalz Report

I'm sorry, but I laughed. Good luck to you and your SO.

Guys on 9/11 ruined flying honestly. All the security means when u fly u have to get there super early and stand in lines all day.

Longjumping-Volume25 , wikipedia.org Report

I'm from the Netherlands and even I knew, as a teen, when I saw that happening on tv, that the world would not be the same after that.

The arsonists who set the Quebec forests ablaze, placing the North western hemisphere under smoke for a third of our summer..... Natural disaster caused a lot of the fires still going today but intentional sabotage didn't help.

Crazys0sa Report

A$$holes.

American flag… every time I see one I automatically think the person flying it is racist. I think we all know who.

LBCvalenz562 Report

I fly my American flag proudly over my rainbow flag pronouncing things such as "black lives matter" and "no human is illegal."You shouldn't have to be a terrible person in order to love your country.

The Cosby Show.Because of Cosby.

Facebook_Algorithm Report

That's kinda sad. I loved the Cosby Show and in a way I still do. But I can't watch it anymore, knowing that all the fun and happiness of Cosby is just a fassade and thhat there's true evil behind it.

The a*****e who poisoned Tylenol in the 1980s and made it acceptable to make everything, not even just medications, very tamper-proof, but also pretty damn user-proof if you have any dexterity limitations at all.

4AcidRayne , Pietro Jeng Report

Making food and drugs tamper proof had always been a good idea, independently of specific events.

Gender reveals during fire season.

doowapeedoo , Alex Hussein Report

Gender reveal parties are ridiculous. imho

Giving out free product when we are just going to throw it away anyway.We used to do this at the end of the night, last few hours of the day if we had a lot of donuts or bread BUT because of certain people who use this as an opportunity to sue a business with the excuse of "They gave me spoiled food and i got sick" now it's not allowed and we have to put coffee grounds on everything we throw away.Also the drug addicts who think it's funny to just throw it all over the parking lot too.Also bathroom privileges. Since it's apparent that people don't know how to use one properly, we don't have to let the public use them and yes that includes your kids as well since you don't clean up after them.

KariRose31 , Tim Mossholder Report

My school just introduced passes that the teachers have that unlock the bathrooms during class. U literally have to get a pass from a teacher who forgets it half the time just to go to the bathroom bc some people decided to graffiti the walls and damage stuff etc…

Not sure if its been said but Kanye ruined Kanye for everybody.

ComradeSeneca Report

Kanye was always an awful person, he made that clear ater what he did to Taylor swift

Red baseball caps.dishonourableaccount replied:"MAGA hats" became popular with his supporters and very unpopular with those who hated him.Issue is, baseball caps are pretty popular and common to wear in a lot of places. Especially among sports fans. Teams like the Kansas City Chiefs, Washingtons Nats, and the Phillies all have red caps that-- at first glance-- looked like MAGA hats. So people felt self-conscious, not wanting to be mistaken for supporters.

seyheystretch , Natilyn Photography Report

i’m glad people wear maga hats, it serves as a good warning sign to stay the f**k away

One guy has a heart attack and the entire world is pressured, by him and other lobbyists, into changing their fast food menus from natural ingredients (beef tallow for fries for example) to artificial s**t to satisfy new requirements for "healthier fat free foods" when... it was never confirmed the guy had it because of fast food. It turns out most fat free foods are full of sugar and are HORRIBLE for you, and whole, fat inclusive foods are much healthier

TwoFingersWhiskey Report

The whole stigma on fat was a gaslighting scam by the sugar industry

The shoe bomber. Editor's note: After “shoe bomber” Richard Reid's attempt to take down a flight from Paris to Miami in late 2001, footwear started coming off at security checkpoints.

FIJAGDH , wikipedia.or Report

A human miscarriage.

Back in the middle ages when I was a child in Detroit, the electric company gave out free light bulbs. You kept the burnt out ones in a bag, and when it was full, Dad would take it to Detroit Edison and exchange them for free ones. Then some guy who owned a store (I remembered it as a pharmacy) sued because he couldn't sell light bulbs and that was the end of free light bulbs.

MomoTheKing92I , Dids Report

The free lightbulbs get a mention here (along with more than you ever thought you wanted to know about lightbulbs in general) https://youtu.be/zb7Bs98KmnY

Your last meal before execution in the U.S. used to be whatever you wanted, until one guy ordered an 18 course feast and didn't touch it. After he was executed a law was passed saying all death row prisoners' last meal would be the same as all the other prisoners.

YodasChick-O-Stick , Jer Chung Report

F*ck, the guy was about to snuff it, and they made a big deal about the fact that he didn't touch his food? What A-holes...

When i was overnight stocking at walmart one of the rules was you can't have headphones. A lot of us did it anyway. We kept it low profile. Music loud enough only you can hear, only one earbud in so you can hear a customer or manager speak to you, we would run the wire under our clothes so you could pretty much only see the bit coming from your neck to your ear, color that matched/blended into our skintone. Management would just turn a blind eye to it. We hire some new guy. He starts rolling around with both earbuds in, music blaring, highlighter pink wires outside the shirt. We tried to mention to him he might wanna keep that low profile. He didnt listen. Less than a week later daytime management came through our shift and told us earbuds/earphones will not be tolerated. to top it off. that guy got fired like a week later. Heightened enforcement of the rule stayed in place.

landob Report

What a dîck.

The toothbrush mustache. Made famous by people like Charlie Chaplin and Oliver Hardy, ruined forever.

BlueRFR3100 , imdb.com Report

It was probably Hitler that made it look so wrong......

Germany, i am British and lived there for 3 years and it’s an astonishing country but gets the worst reputation bc of an artistic thanos.

ManlyMustachioMan , Ingo Joseph Report

I'm equally confused by the Artistic Thanos reference. However having lived in Germany for a number of years, I can confirm it's a wonderful country!

A kid in my high school got their nose broken and had a severe concussion because the guys would take dodgeball so seriously. They banned it my freshman year because multiple kids got hurt and this one guy would not chill tf out. We also stopped being allowed to play soccer because this guy hit a girl in the face so hard he broke her glasses, gave her a nose bleed and knocked her out. Basketball was almost banned because of the same guy. He got mad and chucked the ball.. right into my face. He was on the floor laughing and could barely even say sorry through his laughter. Even the kids that bullied me were like “dude wtf it’s not funny”. Dude had a huge ego from playing soccer for the high school team and obvious anger issues.

NamelessKpopStan Report

Awesome. Instead of banning this one kid from ball sports, the whole school doesn't get to play ball sports? That's weird.

The idea of a secure white collar jobs is ruined by Jack Welch, who first pioneered the practice of laying off masses of people just to buy company stock prices.

antsmasher Report

YES this MF forever destroyed job security, loyalty, longevity, and worst of all SINGLEHANDEDLY fueled the wage and resources gap & created 1%ers

My primary school removed the monkey bars after some kid called Ben fell from them and broke his arm. Thanks a lot, Ben.

Fishfingerrosti Report

What nonsense! Soon they'll force all the parents to permanently wrap their children in bubble wrap until they turn 18.

The kid who jumped off of 7th floor of a building here in Turkey because he thought he was a Pokemon. They stopped airing the show because people thought it was "bad influence" on kids. And Pokemon was huge back when i was a kid so pretty much every kid back then was devastated.

No-Side-2450 , imdb.com Report

He probably didn't just do that because he thought he was a pokemon. I think there were other things at play in that kid's head.

There was a coffee shop that everyone loved that did the thing where if you buy 8 drinks, you get the next one for free. For 2 years I went there religiously at least once a week. Then one day, they told us that the stamp cards were no longer good because someone had stolen the stamp and had been abusing it by stamping their own cards. I just didn't like the accusatory tone when they explained to us what happened, I felt like I lost something that I made an effort to earn (although only maybe 5/8th of one drink), and they were punishing the loyal customers. It was just terribly handled. I never went back after that. The once bustling coffee shop that everyone loved closed down 6 months later.Basically, they probably killed their business over one person who maybe got a few free drinks at most.

Sad_Judgment3233 Report

Couldn’t they just get a new kind of stamp?

Remember the chick that licked all the ice cream in the store? Now we got a bunch of plastic s**t to cut through.

Jdawg_mck1996 , wikipedia.org Report

The plastic covering was there for some brands before she did her thing.

The name Adolf.

orbitaldragon Report

Until 1945, many people in Germany were called Adolf. Partly because it was a very common name, and partly because parents named their children Adolf as a reference. After 1945, suddenly no one was named Adolf anymore. Each used their middle name or, less commonly, the abbreviation "Adi" as a proper name

Someone installed an AC incorrectly in their window at my in-laws building. It ended up falling out and killing a 2 year old girl and now everyone is banned from using window AC's (in certain buildings, not all) (This was in Scarborough - Toronto)

AmazonianGiantess , Ellie Burgin Report

was he convicted of manslaughter?

The guy who stole my Amazon package. I used to have treats outside my door for delivery people but decided to remove all the snacks and the basket they were laid on.

Silverjeyjey44 , Erik Mclean Report

A long, long time ago, when I was a kid, if there were a delivery from the USPS or even something like UPS, and you weren't home, they left you a note, and you could call or check a paper, etc., and arrange to either go pick it up and have it delivered another time. Around 1995 or so, I noticed my local USPS would just leave stuff at the door, and I complained, because I'd never seen that before. I said "Anybody walking by could just steal it?" I thought it was crazy then, and I think it's crazy now. In Japan? They leave a note. And this is in a country where I've seen people walk past MONEY on the street and not pick it up because it isn't theirs.

The sushi terrorist who licked things on the conveyor belt of the Japanese chain Sushiro for clout, making them stop doing the conveyer belt thing. (Tbf, he wasn’t the only one, but the one that comes to mind.)

Majowa , Önder Örtel Report

Sushi-maru in my area still does the conveyor belt, but one of my favorite places now is Hama-zushi. Not the BEST sushi, but it's cheap. They changed their conveyor system so that now, when I order sushi on the little table i-pad, the conveyor brings it right to my table. I do kind of miss the old days of just watching what floated past, but I'll admit, the conveyor is pretty fast, and it's better in a lot of ways.

Whoever made it so we can't bring our dogs to the office anymore. F**K that guy.

LEONAVINTAGE Report

I don't think someone specifically caused dogs to be banned in the office, it's just common sense. Also some people are uncomfortable around dogs and / or allergic so it wouldn't be fair to the coworkers.

Pokémon cards at my school. Some Kid lost a battle and (as playground rules dictate) he had to hand over his losing card to the victor. However, this was a particularly rare card that had suffered a surprise loss when his opponent whipped out an even rarer and more powerful Pokémon to battle it. The kid never expected the defeat and had no intention of handing the card over; a fight broke out and teachers got involved. Being this was one of a multitude of Pokémon related fights breaking out at the time, the teachers (at the end of their tether) gave the boy a choice; hand over the card or Pokémon gets banned in the school…. And that’s why my school had no more Pokémon from that moment on.

BarraDoner , Erik Mclean Report

In the US, playing "for ante" (i.e. betting one card on the match outcome, in all its form) is considered illegal gambling. WOtC initially included ante plays as a rule in the game, quickly switching to making it optional because it was hated by most players. Then, they banned it altogether when the lawyers they could finally afford managed to hammer some sense into Richard Garfield: the rule was making the game fall into federal gambling rules so much that places running tournaments should have had to apply for a gambling license. Garfield in 1995 scrapped the rule, made all the cards using the "ante" effects illegal in all sanctioned play and changed some rules so they would be basically useless in friendly games.

Kevin Spacey ruined Kevin Spacey movies for me.

DJ_Mumble_Mouth Report

Spacey was acquitted of all 9 sexual assault charges recently, so ..

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Adelaide Ross is a writer at Bored Panda. She is originally from Texas and has a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Acting from Oklahoma City University. In the years since her graduation, she has lived in Los Angeles, Sweden, England and now Lithuania. In her free time, Adelaide enjoys traveling, experimenting with new vegan recipes, taking long walks in parks (wearing plenty of SPF!) and crafting the perfect glass of cold brew.

Gabija is a photo editor at Bored Panda. Before joining the team, she achieved a Professional Bachelor degree in Photography and has been working as a freelance photographer since. She also has a special place in her heart for film photography, movies and nature.

Hitler ruined a lot of stuff

Trump ruined a country.

The software technology that we now know as "computer virus" was created prior to the internet for the purpose of providing a means for worker collaboration across a computer network. So the person who ruined it was whoever started using this technology for malicious purposes.