Please no gambling
The Online Gambling Epidemic - Drew Gooden
Seeing a lot about sports betting and learned they lifted the sports betting ban in the US a few years ago. I'm just so bummed to see more people who have a propensity to this obvious psychological manipulation getting taken advantage of. Casinos are already terribly bad actors, we don't need to add another vector to net people into this.
How Casinos Enable Gambling Addicts - The Atlantic
What's the most fucked about all of it is that in my head, I know that
- Gambling enterprises wouldn't be in business if they paid out more than they made
- They explicitly tell people their payout ratio in plain writing (hint: it's less than you put in)
- They use targeted fucked up emotional and psychological manipulation to take advantage of people
- I never want to give them a penny to support their shitty enterprise
- I don't want to enable any more transference of wealth from the bottom to the top than I am forced to
And yet it still seems exciting and fun and my brain still is interested and thinks it could somehow "beat the system" or "get lucky" or "outsmart" them. There is no way that would happen, and it is by it's own design.
Engineered compulsion: why Candy Crush is the future of more than games
When I was super young, maybe 7 or 8, my dad bought me a $1 scratch-it lottery ticket, and I won $2! It felt incredible. I immediately thought that if that worked, I could do it again. So I bought a $2 scratch-it lottery ticket and lost it all. It may have been the best possible outcome because that's my core memory of gambling: the high followed by a deep low. I spent $1 but somehow lost $2.
A bonus tip here: install uBlock origin or Adblock Plus and don't get bombarded by their zillions of ads on Youtube and banner ads, at least.