Mark Zuckerberg — From Villain to MMA Fighter

Zuckerberg spent 2018-2022 as tech's most hated man: Congressional hearings, Cambridge Analytica, $65 billion stock crash from the metaverse pivot. Then he reinvented himself: started doing MMA (competed in a jiu-jitsu tournament), grew a beard, wore gold chains, launched Threads (300 million users in year one), and pivoted Meta's AI strategy so aggressively that the stock recovered to all-time highs. Net worth: $180 billion. The man who was memed as a robot in 2018 is now memed as a surprisingly cool combat sports enthusiast. The reputation laundry cycle took exactly five years.