The Worst Drug

The Worst Drug: tens of millions of uniques, zero revenue, sold to mobsters

A hacker named Raj built TheWorstDrug.tv, which crawled the web for the fastest-growing GIFs (almost all hardcore porn) and loaded them in HD instantly. It pulled tens of millions of monthly uniques but no ad network would touch it, so it made zero money and was eventually shut down after sketchy foreign buyers backed out.

“He couldn't monetize it. They couldn't use it. So there were so many restrictions. No ad network would allow him to use it. And so even though the site, I think it was getting at least for sure millions, I think maybe tens of millions of monthly uniques, and it made zero money and only cost him a lot of money. And the story ends with like someone in Bulgaria or Latvia, like this, like communist, ex-communist country, wanted to buy the site and it was all weird.”