Tonight's Big Loser

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About

Tonight's Big Loser refers to a photograph of reality television prank show Impractical Jokers cast member Salvatore "Sal" Vulcano, often paired with a caption describing him as "tonight's big loser" or "tonight's biggest loser."

Origin

Impractical Jokers is an American hidden camera reality show which premiered on TruTv on December 15, 2011^[1]. The show follows the comedy troupe The Tenderloins consisting of Joseph "Joe" Gatto, James "Murr" Murray, Brian "Q" Quinn, and Salvatore "Sal" Vulcano. In the show, the four compete in various challenges, with the loser forced to complete any demand set by the other three.

In November 2016, photoshopped versions of an old picture of cast member Sal Vulcano started growing popular on Instagram. After the 2016 United States Presidential Election, on November 13th, Instagram user @daddyfanclub_^[2] posted a photo of Sal superimposed on the map of United States. Following the original post, the image gained popularity on Instagram and other social networks.

Spread

In December 2018, the image began being paired with captions describing Sal as "tonight's big loser" after failing at a specific challenge – often illegal, offensive or considered to be frowned upon. While the exact origin of the meme is unknown, one of the earlier popular posts utilizing the format was made by Redditor^[3] Menmario on December 19th, 2018. The post gained over 4,100 upvotes in 12 days.

In the next weeks, more notable examples of the meme were posted by users on Instagram and Reddit, including /r/dankmemes^[4], /r/ImpracticalJokers^[5] and /r/DankMemesFromSite19^[6] subreddits.

On December 26th, 2018, Instagram^[7] account salvulcanoloser was launched, collecting notable examples of the meme.

"Sal Doesn't Have Editing Software" Versions

On December 29th, 2018, Redditor^[8] PancakeIsMyCity posted a version of the meme created in the Facebook Messenger, with caption starting with the phrase "Sal doesn't have editing software". The post received over 6,000 upvotes in 25 days.

The post inspired more creative edits in which alternative methods of image editing were used. On the same day, Redditor^[9] TheWolfRevenge created a version of the meme by renaming a PNG image file (shown below, top right). On January 7th, Redditor^[10] PrepPrepCoinConcede created another version by combining various Magic the Gathering cards to produce the caption. The posts received 63,800 and 16,900 upvotes, respectively.