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For other uses, see Failure (disambiguation).
Train wreck at Montparnasse, France, depicting a failure. 1895

Failure refers to the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of success. Product failure ranges from failure to sell the product to fracture of the product, in the worst cases leading to personal injury, the province of forensic engineering.

Criteria for failure

The criteria for failure are heavily dependent on context of use, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. A situation considered to be a failure by one might be considered a success by another, particularly in cases of direct competition or a zero-sum game. Similarly, the degree of success or failure in a situation may be differently viewed by distinct observers or participants, such that a situation that one considers to be a failure, another might consider to be a success, a qualified success or a neutral situation.

It may also be difficult or impossible to ascertain whether a situation meets criteria for failure or success due to ambiguous or ill-defined definition of those criteria. Finding useful and effective criteria, or heuristics, to judge the success or failure of a situation may itself be a significant task.

Types of failure

Failure can be differentially perceived from the viewpoints of the evaluators. A person who is only interested in the final outcome of an activity would consider it to be an Outcome Failure if the core issue has not been resolved or a core need is not met. A failure can also be a process failure whereby although the activity is completed successfully, a person may still feel dissatisfied if the underlying process is perceived to be below expected standard or benchmark.

  1. Failure to anticipate
  2. Failure to perceive
  3. Failure to carry out a task

Loser is a derogatory term for a person who is (according to the standards of the observer) in general unsuccessful.

Commercial failures

A commercial failure is a product that does not reach expectations of success.

Most of the items listed below had high expectations, significant financial investments, and/or widespread publicity, but fell far short of success. Due to the subjective nature of "success" and "meeting expectations," there can be disagreement about what constitutes a "major flop."

Internet memes

Adaptation of above image illustrating an Internet Meme

"Fail" is the name of a popular Internet meme where users superimpose a caption, often the word "fail" or "epic fail," onto photos or short videos depicting unsuccessful events or people falling short of expections. In July 2003, a contributor to Urban Dictionary wrote that the term, "fail," could be used as an interjection, "when one disapproves of something," citing the example: "You actually bought that? FAIL." This most likely originated as a shortened form of "You fail" or, more fully, "You fail it," the taunting "game over" message in the late 1990s Japanese video game Blazing Star, notorious for its fractured English.

The term "miserable failure" has also been popularized as a result of a widely known "Google bombing," which caused Google searches for the term to turn up the White House biography of George W. Bush.

See also

Further reading

  • Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, New Tork: Basic Books, 1983. Paperback reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-691-00412-9
  • Sandage, Scott A. Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-674-01510-X, ISBN 0-674-02107-X

References

  1. "Memes Help Keep Internet Interesting". www.redorbit.com. March 22, 2008. Retrieved August 9, 2009. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  2. Zimmer, Ben (August 7, 2009). "How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection". New York Times. Retrieved August 9, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  3. Schofield, Jack (17 October 2008). "All your FAIL are belong to us". The Guardian. Retrieved August 9, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  4. Beam, Christopher (2008-10-15). "Epic Win". Slate. Retrieved 2009-08-21. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  5. Mikkelson, Barbara; Mikkelson, David P. (August 13, 2007). "Someone Set Us Up The Google Bomb". Snopes.com. Retrieved August 9, 2009. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

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