The Dumpster Fire Hall of Fame

Before there was a website for it, there were these: the all-time greats of things going spectacularly wrong. Real events, on the record, with sources.

1. Fyre Festival

   2017

   Sold as a luxury music festival on a private island in the Bahamas, promoted by supermodels. Guests arrived to unfinished grounds, disaster-relief tents and the now-famous cheese sandwich. The event was canceled the first day, and founder Billy McFarland later pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to six years in prison.

   Source: Wikipedia: Fyre Festival

2. Enron

   2001

   One of America’s most admired energy companies turned out to be hiding billions in debt through accounting tricks. Enron filed for bankruptcy in December 2001, thousands lost jobs and retirement savings, top executives were convicted, and its auditor Arthur Andersen collapsed along with it.

   Source: Wikipedia: Enron scandal

3. Theranos

   2003–2018

   A blood-testing startup that claimed a few drops from a finger prick could run hundreds of tests, reaching a valuation of about $9 billion. Reporting by The Wall Street Journal in 2015 showed the technology didn’t work as claimed. Founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud in 2022.

   Source: Wikipedia: Theranos

4. FTX

   2022

   One of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges collapsed in a matter of days in November 2022 after customer money was found to have been funneled to a sister trading firm. Founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud in 2023 and sentenced to 25 years.

   Source: Wikipedia: Bankruptcy of FTX

5. Quibi

   2020

   A streaming service built for 10-minute shows on your phone raised about $1.75 billion from Hollywood’s biggest players, launched in April 2020, and announced it was shutting down roughly six months later.

   Source: Wikipedia: Quibi

6. New Coke

   1985

   Coca-Cola replaced its century-old formula with a sweeter recipe. The public backlash was so intense that the original came back 79 days later, rebranded as “Coca-Cola Classic.”

   Source: Wikipedia: New Coke

7. Juicero

   2017

   A $400 Wi-Fi-connected juicer backed by about $120 million in venture money. Then Bloomberg showed that its juice packs could be squeezed just as well by hand. The company shut down a few months later.

   Source: Wikipedia: Juicero

8. WeWork’s IPO

   2019

   The office-sharing company was once valued at $47 billion. When it filed to go public in 2019, investors balked at its finances and governance, the IPO was pulled, and its founder stepped down as CEO. WeWork filed for bankruptcy in 2023.

   Source: Wikipedia: WeWork

9. Microsoft’s Tay chatbot

   2016

   Microsoft released an AI chatbot on Twitter that learned from the people talking to it. Within about a day, users had taught it to post offensive messages, and Microsoft pulled it offline.

   Source: Wikipedia: Tay (chatbot)

10. The HealthCare.gov launch

    2013

    The federal health-insurance website launched to crashes, error messages and endless loading screens. Only a handful of people managed to sign up on the first day, and an emergency team spent months rebuilding it.

    Source: Wikipedia: HealthCare.gov

11. Cyberpunk 2077’s launch

    2020

    One of the most hyped video games ever shipped so full of bugs on older consoles that Sony pulled it from the PlayStation Store and offered refunds, a week after release.

    Source: Wikipedia: Cyberpunk 2077

12. Pets.com

    2000

    The dot-com era’s most famous mascot was a sock puppet. Pets.com went public in February 2000 and was liquidated about nine months later, becoming a symbol of the dot-com bust.

    Source: Wikipedia: Pets.com