Technology's Legacy: the 'Loser Edit' Awaits Us All

An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times Magazine has an insightful article putting into words how I've felt about information-age culture for a while now. It's about a phenomenon dubbed the "loser edit." The term itself was born out of reality TV — once an outcome had been decided while the show was still taping, the producers would comb back through the footage and selectively paste together everything that seemed to foreshadow the loser's fall. When the show actually aired, it thus had an easy-to-follow narrative.

But as the information age has overtaken us, the "loser edit" is something that can happen to anyone. Any time a celebrity gets into trouble, we can immediately search through two decades of interviews and offhand comments to see if there were hints of their impending fall. It usually becomes a self-reinforcing chain of evidence. The loser edit happens for non-celebrities too, using their social media posts, public records, leaked private records, and anything else available through search.

The worst part is, there's no focal point for the blame. The news media does it, the entertainment industry does it, and we do it to ourselves. Any time the internet gets outraged about something, there are a few people who happily dig up everything they can about the person they now feel justified in hating — and thus, the loser edit begins.

Comments

Classic Case

[Aaron_Pike]

It's a classic case of confirmation bias. The human brain does it all the time; if you don't know what it is or how to avoid it, look it up.

Yeah, I'm probably preaching to the choir on that last bit. I hope I am, anyway.

Re:Classic Case

[BarbaraHudson]

You missed my point. The fact that rape victims have been speaking out has made it better for everyone, including those who still can't speak out about it.

And in the current context, we're talking about people who express hatred behind a shield of anonymity. Do you really believe they would do the same if they weren't anonymous? Funny how, once they're exposed, they're not so defiant. Arguing something I never said (wrt banksters) is poor form.

It's a shame that there are people on this planet who think they know better than the people who have something they want to hide for social reasons.

Look, I get it. However, I've been there, and ultimately out is better. Every person who is out makes it easier for everyone to be a little less fearful. We've seen this repeatedly with rape victims, with the LGB, and now we're seeing it with the T and the t.

So let me rephrase what you said, with one change: "It's a shame that there are people on this planet who think they know better than the people who have been there because they want to be seen as politically correct."

Narrative bias

[mean revision]

This style of story-telling is ubiquitous in how the stock market is reported. Every day there's a ton of news and the market either goes up, goes sideways or goes down. Reporters see what happened then pick a sample of news and say "The market rallied on news X & Y". Barry Ritholtz had a great example of a day when the market opened low and then rallied and a newspaper published a morning edition saying the market was selling off because of A and an afternoon edition where it said the market was rallying on the same piece of news.

Fact is that we generally don't know why some things happen, real-life doesn't make for simple stories and people that lose or do bad things are also capable of being kind and charming at other times. We're all heroes of our own stories.