The “Loser Edit”

For the New York Times Magazine, Colson Whitehead traces the conception of the “loser edit,” and how it awaits us all. Fifteen years after the emergence of shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race, “the critical language used to carve up the phonies, saints and sad-sack wannabes of [these] reality shows has migrated, and the loser edit has become a limber metaphor for exploring our own real-world failures.”