Irish Teen Drops Fifty Pounds, Shows Haters a Slim Middle Finger After Embarrassing Club Photo Goes Viral

Whether or not we care to admit it, each and every one of us has had their share of laughs at the expense of some poor sod in an embarrassing nightclub photo. Sometimes it's a hormonally obtuse man in a Diesel button-up, fingering someone on the dance floor. Sometimes a preying vixen is engulfing her victim with a mouth as cavernous as Lucifer's Gate. Sometimes it's an obscure Russian nightclub that's so raunchy, the photographer faces a six year prison sentence for posting the photos. Whatever the case, Facebook, Instagram and evil people who screenshot Snapchat have made it easier than ever to share (and revel in) photos people who were caught in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Rather than roll over and accept this humiliation, Irish teen Conor Doyle decided to act positively on his emotions.

Not long after attending a youth disco at The Wright Venue in Dublin, Conor received a barrage of text messages from various friend. "Is it you? Is that photo you?" they asked. Conor went home and found that a photo of him had been uploaded to an embarrassing nightclub photo Facebook page with a "piss-take" caption. The photo had over seven hundred likes, had been shared to "God knows how many people," and the comments were ruthless.

"You can't really be fine, and anyone who says they're fine is lying," Conor tells Newstalk 106-108fm in an interview. "I consider myself relatively strong mentally, but that hurt and it's hard to deal with. It's not easy." Conor identifies poor eating habits (a pack of digestive biscuits, a Mountain Dew, and a chocolate bar were a frequent after school snack) and lack of exercise as the reason for the weight he had put on.

Some time after the photo was uploaded, Conor found himself at the hospital for a routine checkup. There, local doctors advised him to take part in the W82Go program to address his weight gain. Their advice and the wake-up call that the now infamous photo provided were fuel for a top-to-bottom overhaul of his eating habits, exercise routine, and daily life.

The Internet is awash with similar cases: Samantha Feast, a 43-year old mother of two, lost 126lbs after a photo circulated where she was bigger than her Christmas tree; Sue Verszpremi, a civil servant in the UK, lost 70lbs and left her demanding job after she saw a photo of herself at the beach; Caitlin Seida also ignited drastic changes in her life after a photo of her dressed as Lara Croft went viral. Ms. Seida received even more extreme abuse and was told she "should be put down."

Unfortunately, this is the real world; for every mild success story, there are greater extremes and greater tragedies. You have only to remember the heartbreaking case of Canadian teen Rehtaeh Parsons, who committed suicide after a photo of her being raped circulated, to remember just how drastically the power of the Internet can lead to despair.

One year and fifty pounds (3.5 stone) later, Conor's story is a telling reminder of the power that social media has to affect its users. While Conor's story is one of inspiration, the pain that seemingly random people feel is very real and can induce positive or negative change in the blink of an eye.

Ziad Ramley is on Twitter.