Core Loser Categories, Definitions and Defining Examples
Here are the 10 core loser categories:
Total Loser
Born Loser
Sore Loser
Historical Loser
Loveable Loser
Star-Crossed Loser
Successful Loser
Good Loser
Two-time Loser
The Accidental Hero/Anti-Hero/Poor Bastard/Lost Soul
Creep (vs. Monster)
We will also cover “Group Failure,” as well as debunked ideas and theories including but not limited to:
The Trojans
Soviet Union
Cubs
Blockbuster
Hindenburg
Sex Pistols
American Basketball Association
Glengarry Glen Ross
Plan 9 From Outer Space
Y2K
Pluto
Punk Rock/Prog Rock
String theory
Sports fans (across the board)
Judgement Calls
Losers even in the same category often exhibit very different characteristics, which actually shows the rich assortment of loser types — three born losers can take six different paths in getting there (even, per Edsel Ford, posthumously!). Moreover, some selections might seem arbitrary, as arguments can be made for better fits elsewhere — after all, elements of the loveable loser can be found in the born loser, and to the unpracticed eye some star-crossed losers might seem a better fit in the historical loser category. There's an inevitable and unavoidable blurring of the lines; when we come across tough, hard to categorize cases, we will explain why we chose one category over another.
I want to make it clear that being in a loser category does not a loser make — not always. In other words, just because he lands in the Loveable Loser category, Bill Clinton (Rhodes Scholar, Arkansas Governor at age 32, two-term President, etc.) is not, when taken in his totality, a loser. He's the endearing rogue who got himself impeached over a piece of evidence encrusted on a blue dress, embarrassing his family, his supporters, and just about everyone above the age of 16. Which is so say there's Bill Clinton and there's Slick Willie, and it's the Slick Willy persona that earns him a top spot in our pantheon of Loveable Losers.
The defining losers in each category are, for the most part, time-tested and will remain securely in place well into the future. “Secondary” losers are far less secure. The lists will reflect the position of each loser at the time of our writing. But things change: a candidate, athlete, movie star, multi-billion-dollar company fades...and a spectacular new loser bursts onto the scene and rockets up two tiers to become a worthy candidate for a top spot in a particular category. The story of losers and losing is inherently volatile, ever-changing, needing constant vigilance
Category Definitions and Defining Examples
For purposes of establishing “first principles,” here are brief definitions of each category, with defining examples (in abbreviated form). Going forward, each entrant will receive more focused and extensive attention.
1. The Total Loser is a calculating son of a bitch who visits intentional harm on others – his/her dastardly acts typically include a body count.
Satan gave up a sweet gig because he couldn't deal with being the number two guy: “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Satan needed his own team...basically a Kobe-Shaq situation where two guys couldn't share the rock - one wound up in Miami, which is hot in the summer but not anything like Hell. Satan is THE Total Loser whose need to be “the guy” resulted in centuries of unending pain, grief and devastation.
Adolph Hitler: enough said.
Iago: A solider and advisor and a thoroughly nasty piece of work driven to insane lengths because he was passed over for a promotion.
Charles Manson: Charismatic cult leader and mastermind of a number of grizzly drug-fueled killings whose career path would have been very different if he were a better songwriter.
The Born Loser is not always literally born a loser, though the telltale characteristics tend to surface early and tenaciously cling through life: weakness, vacillation, self-delusion, the consistent inability to make the right decision or do the right thing.
Donald J. Trump: in this case literally, as his career (beginning with his real-estate activities) can be described as an extension of the sins of his father, galactically exaggerated. Yes, he was President, lives a super luxe lifestyle, and is, after all, a “star,” yet Trump is a Jordan-esque business failure whose 6 bankruptcies equals MJ’s 6 championships. He’s a prodigious, world-class geyser of baseless lawsuits, unpaid bills, and provable lies; conspicuously lacking in hand size, which he overcompensates by wearing comically long ties; one-term President who was swept out office on a tsunami of self-pity, left facing a mountain of debt, multiple lawsuits, and a following whose members would be escorted from Mar-a-lago before they ever stepped foot on the property. And don’t get us started on the hair and orange make-up.
(Important sidenote: these entries are not intended to be partisan, though I know there are Trump voters and fans who would take issue with this description, let alone the idea of Trump as a loser of any type. We will be including people from both sides of the aisle – for instance, Bill and Hillary Clinton.)
Edsel Ford in his lifetime was anything but a loser, let alone a Born Loser. He was CEO of Ford for 24 years and during his tenure modernized the company. Edsel Ford entered the pantheon of Born Losers 15 years after his death when Ford introduced a car that is to this day synonymous with complete, colossal, world-historical failure: the Edsel Corvair (known simply as the Edsel).
Kendall Roy: In just about every episode of Succession, he yo-yos from ridiculous top-of-the-world ego-tripping to self-loathing and despair – while he manically strives to succeed his father as company CEO. At one point his best frenemy, Stewy, goes off on him: “Fuck you, too, you pusillanimous piece of fucking fool’s gold — fucking, silver spoon asshole.” That about captures it. Succession had a glorious four season run that vaulted it into the pantheon of all-time great TV series – securing Kendall Roy a top spot as an all-time born loser.
3. The Sore Loser is one who cannot accept losing and reverts to the behavior of a raging three year old who doesn't grasp the concept of personal accountability. Being a Sore Loser is not anything like being a raging sociopath, but when a Sore Loser is in the midst of an all-out public meltdown, it's hard to tell the difference. Examples include:
Old Testament God, creator of the universe also known as the Almighty, Elohim, Adonai, Yahweh, etc., dominates the Hebrew Bible like a wrathful Wilt Chamberlin tossing around a bunch of 5-9 white guys from the late 1950s. His rage benders and vengeful acts are often totally out of proportion to the alleged offenses.
John McEnroe was a supremely talented left-handed tennis player with the hair-trigger temper of a colicky two year old who acted out on Centre Court like he's back in the sandbox whacking some blameless kid with a plastic shovel.
Kanye West: At the 2006 MTV Europe Music Awards Yeezy was so enraged he didn't win for Best Video that he stormed the stage and showered the slack-jawed audience with a ridiculous expletive-laced tirade because his video "cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it. I was jumping across canyons…If I don't win, the awards show loses credibility."
4. The Historical Loser. "It was worse than a crime, it was a blunder." Historical Losers are losers unlost to history – which is to say, their blunders reverberate for all recorded time.
Moses: Charles Barkley, Dan Marino and Ted Williams never made it to the promised land. Moses, on the other hand, never made it to THE Promised Land — roughly the difference between doing a foodie tour of Rome, NY vs. Rome, Italy. Moses is the gold standard in all-time greats who never grasped the brass ring.
Napoleon: Emperor of France and military mastermind, also known for one of the greatest battlefield defeats ever, and a comical combination of towering self-confidence and minimal height. Napoleon was the first international rock star — a charismatic, eccentric genius with an artistic stubborn streak. Imagine Prince with officer training and battlefield experience.
Lee Harvey Oswald: The patsy’s patsy - alleged lone assassin of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas and the fountainhead for modern conspiracy theorists worldwide.
5. The Lovable Loser is one whose failures, shortcomings, ill-advised choices and/or bad instincts engender affection, even empathy, as the Loveable Loser is usually well-intentioned, and bears no malice even in the act of fucking up. Examples include:
Oscar Wilde: Immortal literary figure, dandy and peerless wit who gave the mannered idiocies and received wisdom of the day a hard time, while doing a stretch of it himself.
Charlie Chaplin (the Little Tramp character): the first modern Lovable Loser — the underdog’s underdog you can’t help but root for.
Bill Clinton: Calling our 42nd President a Loveable Loser is not about his place in history. It's not about his political failures or missteps, his policies or his penchant for lawyerly hair splitting. Bill Clinton has a permanent lock on the Loveable Loser category for two distinct, yet related reasons:
His breathtaking ability to spontaneously generate an endless ooze of cornpone on anything, anywhere and anytime.
His less than breathtaking ability to keep his executive privilege checked and in his pants.
6. The Star-Crossed Loser is grounded in Greek tragedy where high-born males are brought low by an ill-fated alignment of the stars; it now refers to any poor bastard who, in the normal course of activity, suddenly, unexpectedly, but inevitably falls through a bottomless trap-door, through no fault of their own.
Oedipus
Wally Pipp
Pete Best
Joan of Arc
Bill Buckner
Buddy Holly
Tupac
Amelia Earhart
7. The Successful Loser snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s a dramatic reversal of fortune, i.e., when you screw up a sure thing, failed in the clutch, had it all then let it slip away. Think Bernie Madoff, Al Gore, Martha Stewart.
8. The Good Loser is the opposite of the Sore Loser, though if you're playing a pick-up game and had to pick between a Good Loser and a Sore Loser, more often than not you'd pick the latter. While we admire the Good Loser and hold him/her up as a model to our sons and daughters, it's the Sore Loser who will go to irrational lengths to win. Plus, if you're on the losing team, it's always nice to be able to outsource the resentment and excuse-mongering to the Sore Loser, who will happily do the work for you. Finally, it should be pointed out that this category is the only one that qualifies as the exact opposite of another, which removes much of the heavy lifting. We essentially just wrote from right to left. Think Jesus (the original mensch), George W. Bush, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
9. The Two-Time Loser has experienced failure or defeat on two separate occasions, in the same context or endeavor. It can also apply to someone who has failed more than twice in the same context or endeavor. American politics is replete with two-time losers; other notables in this category include Peter O'Toole, the brilliant British star of screen and stage who received eight Academy Award nominations throughout his career but never won, and, yes, Elon Musk, who was demoted/ousted by the two companies he co-founded (Zip2 and Paypal), and we are still living through his purchase of Twitter (which, as of this writing, has lost 2/3 of its value from its $44 billion purchase price).
10. The Accidental Hero/Anti-Hero achieves heroic status by chance – he/she is thrust into an extraordinary situation and is unexpectedly up to the moment or challenge. There can also be a schlemiel* aspect to the accidental hero – for instance, the version of Larry David as portrayed in Curb Your Enthusiasm, whose accidental heroism is in his lone and usually absurd fight against mindless convention. Other signature accidental heroes include Leonard Zelig from the Woody Allen movie of the same surname, and Neo from the Matrix.
*According to “The Big Brooklyn Handbook of Numbskulls,” by Archibald Knepp, 1948, a schlemiel is the person who spills food; the schlimazel is the one the food was spilled on.)
Final Cautionary Note
We want to make it clear that these Chronicles are not intended as a how-to on averting failure or tuning losses into wins. We're not looking to justify losing, to minimize it, or change the subject. We are not looking to make you feel better about your near-misses and epic fails, or to tell you that falling short or just plain fucking up is all right. It's not, and it's perfectly healthy to feel like shit when you lose — within reason, of course. Nor are we setting out to discuss losing and losers through a specific lens, agenda or ideology.
If you're looking for an evolutionary biology approach, where winning is hard-coded to perpetuate the species, this is not the place.
If you're looking for a Marxist approach that says losing is a necessary condition for winning, and is in fact conditioned on losing very, very badly, you need to look elsewhere.
If it's a cultural historical approach that places losing and losers within the Western experience, with a canon, even a cult of loser-dom (after all, who are Achilles, Oedipus, Hamlet, etc. but losers on a world-historical scale?), you are in the wrong section of the library.
If it's a behavioral economist approach you seek and are looking for strategies to make losing payoff, try again.
If you're looking for some pop psychology to ease the pain and stigma and gets you to "own" your losses and habitual losing, keep walking.
If you're looking for a sports analytics approach and want to see how to apply an efficiency model to specific categories of personal failure, we suspect you're an addictive personality with a gambling problem, in which case we can't help you.
If you're looking for the vicarious, yet entirely safe, experience of losing at the very highest levels at the absolute worst time with the entire world watching, these Chronicles are just what the doctor ordered (if you want a second opinion, sure - you’re ugly too! With apologies to the immortal R. Dangerfield, one of the patron saints of this project).