Planet Loser

Planet Loser is a subculture where being a “loser” is the norm. In other words, being screwed up and living a mediocre life is the norm, and anybody who is happy and thriving is looked upon as a alien and a threat.

In the Urban Dictionary, loser is defined as “someone who doesn’t know what they have and F-s it up”. A loser is always making bad choices and messing up his/her own life and the lives of those around him/her. Some people make much out of whatever little they are given, but the loser could be given much and still make very little of it. Even if the loser has a privileged upbringing where Mom and Dad pay for him/her to go to college, he/she can still underachieve, never accomplish much of anything and be in one dysfunctional relationship after the other.

Being the 45-year-old bagger at the grocery store does not make one a loser. The bagger at the grocery store is still a productive member of society. A person with a “lower-end” job can still be a great husband and father, and still be a great contributor to his community. The real loser, on the other hand, may have a perfectly respectable desk job, but messes up almost every relationship he is in. He hates coming in to work every day, and only does so to pay the bills. He wastes both time and money on superfluous things, and may spend hours wasting in front of the television, guzzling down alcoholic drinks.

Loserhood likes company

Losers are not happy with their own lives, so they like to be in an environment where others are not doing too well either. Sometimes losers will even project their limitations onto other people. In other words, if something is hard or impossible for them, then they may assume it is hard or impossible for everybody else even if it is not.

One woman told me that she does not like being around happy people. She preferred to be around people who are “normal.” By no coincidence, her life was a mess because of bad decisions she had made. She was the kind of person that you feel sorry for when you first meet her. She was unemployed and on disability. She had gotten into a car accident years back and has not been the same since then. She had no place to live of her own, and kept living with one person after the other. Every time I turned around, some new bad thing would seem to be happening to her.

When she lived with me for a couple of months, I saw her continually make bad decisions that kept her in her bad situation. She would turn down opportunities to find a permanent place to live. She spent whatever money she had on expensive name-brand items at Whole Foods. Then she admitted to me that the reason she got into that car wreck was that she was driving drunk at night and ran the car into a palm tree. When she went to ride with me in the car, she did not even wear a seat belt. It was as if she was setting up the next big misfortune to fall on her.

Her friend told me that he has seen her burn bridges. In addition, she was mean and exploitative towards the people who let her live with them, including me. She would sometimes drive people to fits of rage. One person after the other kicked her out of their residence. One could see why such a person cannot relate to happy people.

When losers are around people who are happy and thriving, they are reminded that they are losers. A loser likes being around people who are screwed up and full of problems. The loser may even say that he/she likes being around people with lots of problems because it means they are “human.” The reality is that being human is no excuse to be screwed up. Even when people are living in poverty in a third world country, they can at least foster good relationships with others and enjoy the simple things, and with few problems. Problems are bound to occur even when we make good decisions because some things are outside of our control. Nonetheless, actively wishing for everyone around you to have “at least some problems” is evil.

In some cases, the loser may sabotage others in order to prevent people around him/her from thriving in ways that he/she is not. An example can be found in the movie Mona Lisa Smiles where the snob, Betty Warren, marries an unloving man who is never there for her and is out having an affair. Because she is unhappy with her own life, she decides to sabotage the love life of her friend, Connie Baker, by telling her lies that her lover is only using her when he actually was not. Connie was so hurt that she would not even talk to him, and their relationship almost ended.

As Betty’s marriage crumbles, Betty becomes increasingly mean to her other friends. She makes mean remarks like “Does he pay for your sex?” and “They say you’re a whore. And pretty soon, once they’ve all sampled you, they’ll toss you aside like a used rag.” Then she says “The men you love don’t even want you! Your father doesn’t want you!” At this point, Betty breaks down and cries. She is in so much pain that being mean cannot even make her feel better anymore.

Losers Who Control Other People

Sometimes losers try to wield control over friends, family members and/or romantic partners. Controlling and/or exercising authority over another person gives the loser a sense of superiority, status and power where the loser would otherwise feel insignificant and worthless. We have all heard of controlling people — especially controlling romantic partners. People can be controlling for a variety of reasons, and not all controlling people are losers, but being controlling is still a toxic behavior.

When losers try to control others, it can be oppressive and sometimes abusive for the other person. Losers are most likely to try to control people whom they perceive as easy targets, namely vulnerable people, which includes children, disabled people, chronically ill people and women (if the loser is a man).

When a man has a desire to control someone, he often views women as easier targets because they are easier to overpower. A man who controls his girlfriend may even rationalize and say to himself that he is only controlling her “because he loves her” or because he “wants to protect her.” What he is really doing is oppressing the woman and preventing her from thriving and succeeding in ways that he himself never could.

Some losers wield oppressive control over their own children. Normally one would think that parents would want their children to thrive and succeed. If anything, parents are known to sometimes live vicariously through their children, acting as if their children’s accomplishments are their accomplishments. However, one psychologist told me that some parents do not like to see their child do something that they have neither the courage nor the self discipline to do. For example, the adult child may undergo intensive lifestyle changes to reverse a chronic disease while the parents continue to live with their chronic diseases and chronic drug dependences.

Throughout history, and throughout much of the world today, women have been subservient to men. As a result, women can sometimes feel powerless and insignificant…until they have children. When the woman has children, she is finally in a position of authority and status. She finally has power over other human beings. What she does with that power will say a lot about her character. Will she strive to give her children the best lives that she can? Will she try to get her daughters the education that she never had? Or will she try to prevent her daughters from doing great things simply because it will remind her of what she never did herself?

Hypothetical scenario: Let us say that a woman was raised in a culture where women did not enjoy as many privileges as men. Not only has she had less privilege than her male counterparts, but she also is weak in spirit and in character. She always did what the world expected of her without standing up against anything or questioning anything. She never excelled at anything. She never stood out in any way. However, her daughter is not like her. Her daughter is tenacious, and ready to take on challenges that the world does not expect her to take on; but the mother does not want to see her succeed, because her daughter’s success would remind her of the great things that she never did. So whenever her daughter tries to take on a challenge, the mother whispers into her ear “You can’t, you do not have what it takes, but I will always love you anyway.” She rationalizes and tells herself she is treating her daughter this way out of love, and to “protect her”. What she really wants is for her and her daughter to be worthless underachieving nothings together, rather than for her to be an underachieving nothing by herself.

Older women especially have seen times when women had lower status than men. Women could not even get their own credit cards in the United States until the 1970s. Some older women are glad to see young girls today enjoying privileges that they never had when they were young; but other older women may get jealous.

Hypothetical scenario: Throughout her life, a woman has had lower privilege and lower status than her male counterparts and weak character. As a result, she has not amounted to much of anything. She never even got married or had children. Now that she has gotten old, she finally has the opportunity to have a higher status than “those young people.” She wants to be known for her wisdom, but has not acquired much wisdom during her many years because of how little she has done with her life. She likes to act as the strict disciplinarian and intimidate children because it gives her a feeling of power that she never had when she was younger. She likes to control children because otherwise she feels small and insignificant.

Sometimes adults abuse children because of their own insecurities. Many of us have heard of cases of physical abuse and mental abuse; but what if the abuse is very subtle? The parent may not physically abuse the child, or even make the child cry, but the parent may oppress the child in such a way as to prevent the child from thriving and achieving his/her potential. Such an abuse can be subtle and harder to detect by adults outside the home, such as teachers and sports coaches.

Losers as Caretakers

In some relationships, the boyfriend or husband acts as the caretaker to a girlfriend or wife who is morbidly obese and can barely move. I have seen documentaries where a doctor presents a promising plan for the woman to lose weight and become more independent again. One would think that the boyfriend would want to see his girlfriend lose weight and become more attractive and independent. Indeed, more often than not, the boyfriend or husband was quite supportive of the woman’s quest to lose weight, but in some cases the boyfriend was not so supportive. Some boyfriends actually like having a girlfriend who is dependent on them. He can more easily control her, and he knows it would be next to impossible for her to leave him for another man.

When a loser is in the position of caretaker, he/she is in a position of power and control over another human being. This position gives the loser a sense of power and status. Having power over another human being helps the loser forget that he/she is a loser.

We can be sure that someone is a bad person when he/she shows signs of wanting another person to remain in a state of perpetual dependency. Good people want what is best for others, and will try to help someone achieve a state of independence if indeed they can. Bad people, especially losers, desire for the other person to remain dependent and in a decrepit state.

The good news is that if you are a truly good person, then you are not going to be a loser. Good people have too much of a passion for helping others and making the world a better place. They are bound to amount to something, even if they do not have the most prestigious career in the eyes of the world.

Summary

When you land your spaceship on Planet Loser, you will be viewed as either a fellow loser, an alien or a prisoner. If you are screwed up and have lots of problems in your life caused by your bad decisions, then Planet Loser will welcome you as one of its own. If you are happy and thriving, then you will be seen as an alien and a threat. If, however, you are vulnerable — a child, a disabled person, a sick person, etc — then Planet Loser may capture you and keep you as a prisoner. Such is the environment that losers create around themselves in order to cope with their mediocre existence.