Success-adjacent loser

There's a term I have not heard before -

Success-adjacent loser

Sure seems apt. This is in the comments from "She attended college at Brown, and spent a summer in Los Angeles trying to become an actress and a model, and going to clubs with Leonardo DiCaprio." by Ann Althouse. Althouse's post is red-meat for lifestyle-condemning comments and the commenters do not disappoint. Sadly, their factual arguments are not wrong.

Strikingly, there is a fair amount of commonality between the comments of the NYT where this appears and Althouse's commenters.

But back to success-adjacent loser. Great term for all the wannabes out there. Adjacent to excellence or productivity or success or whatnot but without the capacity themselves. They all seem to end up writing tripe for mainstream media desperate for content.