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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!"