Regular readers know I’m always on the lookout for new cultural insights. To that effect, a recent Twitter thread just caught my eye.
This thread resonates with a post I wrote earlier this year about the same phenomenon. The only difference is the decade. If you want to gauge how far American society has declined, consider who pop culture presented as the biggest loser at various times in the past.
Let’s try the experiment.
Biggest Loser of the 70s
The aforementioned Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver fame personified the archetypal antisocial lowlife that vacationing Midwesterners feared crossing paths with in New York. Yet, as the OT points out, Travis had steady employment, a spacious apartment, and a girlfriend. He was living large by Millennial and Zoomer standards. But in the 70s being an oddball with a menial job was enough to qualify you for scumbag status.
Biggest Loser of the 80s
Like his 1970s predecessor, the Reagan era loser was telegraphed earlier in this post.
Rising affluence also raised the bar on loserdom in the 80s. We’ve already established that Travis Bickle was a success story compared to young adults today. But a mere decade later, 80s loser Al Bundy already made Travis look like gutter trash. Al had a wife, two kids, his own car, and a house now valued at half a million dollars. But like Travis, Al had a low-end job–even more of a kiss of death to one’s social status in the 80s.
Biggest Loser of the 90s
Homer Simpson‘s sad sack status looks so ridiculous in retrospect that they did a whole episode lampshading it. That episode coincided with Cultural Ground Zero, for what it’s worth.
Homer’s prosperity and social standing continue the progression we’ve seen with Travis and Al. He has a loving wife and three kids, owns two cars, and lives in a palatial house in a good neighborhood. Unlike his service and retail industry predecessors, Homer has a respectable tech job in the energy sector. He’s branded a loser solely because the writers say so.
The Simpsons brings us full circle to Ground Zero. Millennials born when the show first aired are now approaching Homer’s age. Yet they’ve seen their marriage and home ownership rates and overall net worth take a nosedive.
We now live in an age when Homer Simpson’s lifestyle looks unattainable to most young adults. Travis Bickle’s seamy urban existence is the best many of them can aspire to.
The last two decades’ biggest losers are collectively Millennials and Zoomers. Which raises the question, who won?
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