Someone who doesn't handle rejection well are often were not told no a lot growing up. I personally went through this phase and so I have a bit of sympathy for OP.
Looking back at my younger self and this person I can't help but cringe. It was a long uphill battle to be okay with rejection and I still struggle with it but I can't change my natural emotional response but I can control how I react to rejection.
I hope that OP will find his way without channelling his anger in ways that is counter-productive.
Given the 15 year gap between the events and this post about them, I'm pretty sure OP isn't still angry. They likely were just working on a search engine, and this old story came to mind, and they realized that it'd be perfect clickbait (maybe rage-bait?) to serve as lead-gen for the search-engine project.
(Remember, someone building a search-engine is likely very, very familiar with SEO.)
Looking back at my younger self and this person I can't help but cringe. It was a long uphill battle to be okay with rejection and I still struggle with it but I can't change my natural emotional response but I can control how I react to rejection.
I hope that OP will find his way without channelling his anger in ways that is counter-productive.