"My advice would be to bring a friend that has your basic characteristics, but is slightly less attractive."
— Dan Arieli gives dating tips in Predictably Irrational
A character who exists to provide a flattering contrast to the audience by being worse than them in some specific respect.
This trope exists on a sliding scale of scorn; at one end the character simply exists as a flattering contrast to the audience (the Idiot Hero often fits here). At this end of the spectrum, the audience thinks "if this character can do x, then I certainly can do x!"
On the other end of scorn scale is the harder version, where a character is made pathetic so the audience can feel better about themselves (via Schadenfreude). The Ditz, a very common trope in Sitcoms, is this (but Played for Laughs).
Arguably an Expectation Lowerer is an Inversion of Escapist Character; Escapist Characters allow you to feel good by giving you an Audience Surrogate that you can experience awesomeness through. An Expectation Lowerer makes you feel good in the exact opposite way; you cannot identify with this character because they, in at least one respect, are worse than you.
Not to be confused with This Loser Is You; where a character you identify with is the character that sucks. This Loser Is You basically flings the audience's faults back into their face whereas an Expectation Lowerer allows them to distance themselves from their faults.
Possibly related to Friedrich Nietzsche and his concept of "Pathos Of Distance" (where one casts that which one does not identify with as the morally wrong).
Examples
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Live-Action TV
- MADtv (1995) has the skits of The Depressed Persian Tow Truck Man, who constantly say things about how his life sucks, that people he's talking with feel better about themselves as their lives aren't as bad as his. One skit has him be part of a therapy group, where him talking about his crappy home life, makes the other members feel better about their lives.
- Harry Kim's job on Star Trek: Voyager was basically to make everyone else on the USS Voyager look better. Garrett Wang didn't really get to act muchnote , and his character wasn't allowed to accomplish anything, or get what he wanted, or have a love life to speak of, or get promotednote , and even things that would pass without comment on any other Trek series got him into troublenote ; meanwhile, his character's best friend, Tom Paris, was The Ace with skills in literally every field of human endeavour and, by the end of the series, a wife and the beginnings of a family. And even despite this, he still ended up more popular than Neelix, which only goes to show that having someone be dumped on constantly for seven years can still earn a certain measure of sympathy.
- In Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray Barone makes an enormous blunder when stuck for a blank videotape in a hurry to record that year's Superbowl. He ends up using his own wedding videotape. Despite, as wife Debra tells him at great and furious length, it having a massive label on it that says "Our Wedding" in 108-point font. His father reflects later note that wherever men are gathered together who have done dumb bone-headed things to aggravate their wives, however dumb, however stupid, they can take comfort in saying
Well, at least I didn't pull a Ray Barone!
- The Inbetweeners follows the misadventures of four teenage boys who constantly fail at getting laid or being cool. Among their group is a pompous twat who kisses up to all the adults, a short-tempered lad who constantly fails at impressing the girl of his dreams, an idiot whose parents split up because his dad's a homosexual and a sex-crazed compulsive liar.
- Malcolm in the Middle: The central family of the series are so absurdly dysfunctional that any real family can't help but feel better about themselves after watching. Every member is unbearable in their own way, between shrewish, abusive, harpy mother Lois, moronic buffoon father Hal, impulsive and irresponsible rebellious eldest son Francis, idiotic bully Reese, Insufferable Genius (who isn't anywhere near as much smarter than the others as he thinks he is) Malcolm, and the downright strange Dewey, meaning everyone has someone to relate and feel superior to.
- The Walking Dead: Gregory is the leader of Hilltop Colony but that's a generous statement, since he's a lazy, pathetic, selfish coward who doesn't care about anybody but himself, with his lieutenant Jesus doing much of the actual work running the place. He's a sexist creep who preys on any woman who gets close enough to him, refuses to do anything to better his community, and is always happy to take a knee before anybody if it means saving his own skin. He would prefer to suck up to the villainous Saviors instead of do anything to protect his people and in fact tries to sell them out to Negan. With each episode he takes progressively dirtier, cowardly actions to try to save himself, to the point his entire story in Season 8 is sucking up to whoever is in power around him. His final episode sees him seemingly having reformed during a Time Skip, but it reveals that he's the same sleazy coward he was before who actually did the hard work to earn everyone's trust just so he could secretly depose Maggie, who has replaced him as leader. The audience is in no way invited to feel sorry for him, and in fact probably feel better given they'd almost certainly do better in a zombie apocalypse than him.
Newspaper Comics
- According to Scott Adams, this was the reason he ended the relationship between Dilbert and Liz. He kept getting e-mails stating essentially "Dilbert shouldn't get lucky before I do."
Philosophy
- Friedrich Nietzsche and his aforementioned concept of the "pathos of distance" is arguably related to this. Nietzsche argued that moral concepts came about because societies/groups/cliques defined themselves (and a list of traits they allegedly embodied) as "the good" and hence "the unlike us" became "the bad."
- St Thomas Aquinas, among other Christian writers, believed that the saints
in Heaven will be able to observe the torments of the wicked in Hell and rejoice in them, "insofar as by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy." Tertullian, an ecclesiastical writer during the time of the Roman Empire, wrote in De Spectaculis about this, stating that being in Heaven and watching the damned in Hell is a much greater joy than Roman spectacles like the circus, theatre, or stadium.
Video Games
- Overwatch has a Metagame example in Sombra. When she was made available to play, fans found that she has a very high skill floor; good Sombra players can use her hack-based skills to interfere with the enemy team's effectiveness, but bad Sombra players, who are everywhere, contribute virtually nothing of value, not helped by her main weapon being rather low on the damage side. This trope comes into play with accounts of some Sombra players being told to switch to Hanzo (a snipe-based Hero), who was previously the meta's Memetic Loser and face of "awesome but misused character" (i.e. even if you're playing poorly as Hanzo, he's still more effective than Sombra at low-level play).
- Fate/stay night has the very infamous example of Shinji Matou, a character who believes himself to be more important than he really is. While he is a hit with the ladies at school, most important female characters want nothing to do with him, his magical capabilities are at an absolute zero, and often resorts to cowardly and despicable acts to get what he wants. While there is no shortage of monstrous villains, Shinji stands as being the most pathetic of them all. So much so that in Carnival Phantasm, his sister Sakura outright states that he only exists to make everybody around him look good. He indisputably crosses the line from this into flat-out Hate Sink in the versions of the story where he is revealed to have raped Sakura in the past, albeit under the influence of their sadistic grandfather.
- The Crestfallen Warrior in Demon's Souls and his various counterparts in the Dark Souls series serve as a reminder of what you essentially are if you give up on trying to beat the game. They started out on a quest not unlike your own and died enough times that they lost their nerve to go on. The one in Demon's Souls even invites you to cop a seat next to him, saying "We can sit here forever." In other words, This Loser Is You...but only if you let the game get the better of you. On a broader level, "going hollow" in the Dark Souls universe—becoming a mindless zombie—is implied to be the fate of players who give up on the game, as undead remain sane only as long as they retain some sense of purpose and the will to press on.
Web Original
- Ctrl+Alt+Del: Ethan is a lazy bum who is obsessed with video games. In comparison to everyone, including the reader, Ethan is an utter loser who is Too Dumb to Live, and only gets by to sheer luck, or by the pity of his friends.
- The Scumbags of the Internet section on A Dose of Buckley gives us the following catchphrase, which all but invokes this trope:
"So thanks to today's Scumbag of the Internet, [insert name or nickname here], for making us all feel better by knowing no matter what we do in life, we'll always be better than he/she/they is/are."
Western Animation
- The Simpsons:
- Lampshaded In-Universe by Homer in "Dead Putting Society", who believes (or is painfully, accurately aware) that everyone else in Springfield looks down on him in the same terms: "my life might suck, but at least I'm not that guy." This is why he becomes so obsessed with Bart beating Todd Flanders in the miniature golf tournament:
Homer: Sometimes the only way to feel good about yourself is by making someone else look bad! And I'm tired of making people feel good about themselves!
- Barney Gumble is meant to be even more of a Straw Loser than Homer is. Subverted in that Barney makes an effort to get clean and sober (although he does fall Off the Wagon every now and again). He's been Out of Focus in more recent seasons, because, with his recovery efforts, he does not fulfill his Expectation Lowerer role anymore. As well as some parental groups not understanding or tolerating the implication that such a roaring drunk could have an artistic side.
- The episode "Homer Defined" gives us "pulling a Homer", describing when a person succeeds despite being outrageously ignorant or stupid. The phrase, in fact, is added to the show's In-Universe dictionary.
Lisa: Our dad - now he belongs to the ages.
- Lampshaded In-Universe by Homer in "Dead Putting Society", who believes (or is painfully, accurately aware) that everyone else in Springfield looks down on him in the same terms: "my life might suck, but at least I'm not that guy." This is why he becomes so obsessed with Bart beating Todd Flanders in the miniature golf tournament:
- Carl of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Fat, balding, ugly, hairy, a slob, a perverted sleazeball, and beyond.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- The title character is not the brightest bulb in the circuit by any means, but compared to Patrick, he looks like a genius.
- Squidward is a lame-o who thinks of himself as an underappreciated genius when he is living a lousy life as a cashier at the Krusty Krab, and his talents are mediocre to horrendous. He basically makes everyone else's life look happier than his dead-end career.
- Bubble Bass is an obese, picky fish and the main antagonist of several episodes, but he's shown to be a pathetic Basement Dweller who constantly suffers misfortune due to being an obnoxious jackass to everyone around him. His lifestyle is shown to be absolutely pitiful, as he is so immature and vain that he refuses to help his mother around the house despite being in his late 20's and living there for free, and as time goes on is shown to be more pathetic with each passing appearance. The episode "Momageddon" shows him happily and proudly boasting about how his mother will treat him like a baby, making him drink from a baby bottle, doing everything for him, and keeping him on an almost literal leash; all so he can get away with not doing anything for himself or making changes to his life or to better himself. It's impossible for the audience to look at Bubble Bass's immaturity that worsens with each passing episode and not feel better about themselves.
- Richard Watterson on The Amazing World of Gumball seems to have the sole purpose of saying and doing things so stupid even Loser Protagonist Gumball sees how dumb they are. Notably, Richard, unlike Gumball, is such an idiotic loser that things often actually work around to his advantage precisely because of the fact that no one expects anything of him, so in a way, by making Gumball (and by extension the audience) seem like less of a loser, he makes Gumball look like more of a loser.
- Moral Orel has Clay Puppington, an abusive, self-destructive, hypocritical, alcoholic Attention Whore who hates everyone and everything, especially himself. Deconstructed in season 3, when his dysfunction gradually alienates every single person in his life.
- Beavis and Butt-Head are impossibly stupid, ugly and live in squalor. They're also very self-centered and mean-spirited, so the sight of them either failing or even getting badly injured feels satifying to watch.
- Koala Man: Kevin Williams aka Koala Man sees himself as an Aussie Batman, but in reality he's a pudgy, balding dork wearing a knitted mask and a blanket that's barely tolerated by his community. Koala Man's brand of heroism amounts to little more than checking the townsfolk adhere to proper regulatory guidlines. What's more, this isn't because he's got nothing better to do, as plenty of superhero-grade threats appear in each episode, but Koala Man is too anal retentive to be of any use.