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Submission + - Technology's Legacy: The 'Loser Edit' Awaits Us All (nytimes.com)

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 borne out of reality TV — once an outcome had been decided, the show's producers would comb back through the footage and selectively paste together everything that seemed to foreshadow the loser's fall.

But as the information age has overtaken us, this 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 central place to 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.

Comment Re: Bring on the lausuits (Score 1) 599

In a normal world, your argument would be persuasive. But since the GOP has spent the last 30 years jumping every shark they can get, the problem isn't whether Dems can win 2016, it's the whether the GOP can untangle itself from the crazy long enough to not scare off most "independent" voters.

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