tbf, the fact that promoting this is legal in the first place angers me
It’s not in the developed countries, it’s a no-brainer, really.
It is in the UK, and it’s pervasive as fuck
I’ve gambled twice in my life. The first time was sitting in a gas station casino because my buddy’s car overheated on the pass. Put $20 into a keno machine, lost about half of it, realized I could have gotten several beers instead. Got annoyed with myself and cashed out.
The second time was in Vegas. Same buddy gave me a massive hit on a vape pen and dragged me over to a blackjack table. He dumped some chips in front of me things happened, the table was a lot of fun to look at, the dealer cleared her throat in a really annoyed way because I was grooving on the pattern on the back of the cards instead of playing. I handed the chips back to my buddy and told the entire casino I was too high for this shit.
I guess I don’t have the gene. I’ve got an addictive personality in general and that’s been fun to deal with, but I’m glad it doesn’t extend to gambling.
Ublock Origin users:
I forced Chrome to continue using it and it seems to be holding strong so far.
I’ve had exactly one gambling experience in my life. I went with some friends to a casino in Louisiana and I tried a slot machine. I stuck my credit card in the slot, was debited $5, pushed the “lever” button, and won exactly bupkis. I don’t know what the appeal is but I imagine it involves winning occasionally. I’m going to stick with my 0.000 batting average and be happy.
Never once in my life have I felt the appeal of gambling.
All I needed to learn is that statistically, the house comes out ahead, and that was that.
A friend once insisted on dragging me out to a casino, and I came up with a hare-brained plan for blackjack (since it has the best odds of victory). I decided to double my bet every time until I won. But only up to as much money as I was willing to lose, because there’s a low chance for this strategy to go poorly very quickly.
I made enough money to pay for the entire trip, and then I never gambled again for the rest of my life. So that’s my story of how I came out ahead.
Same. Went to a casino once, pulled a slot machine and won $30. Then lost $30. Never returned to one.
I do enjoy being gifted scratch-off tickets, though, but I won’t spend my own money on them (unless as gifts to others). I manage at a grocery store and I’m often surrounded by people who aren’t particularly wise with money. Every time there’s a big lottery drawing coming up I get to hear from everyone how “THE JACKPOT IS UP TO 30-MILLION NOW! YOU BETTER GET A TICKET! YA CAN’T WIN IF YA DON’T PLAY!”
Yeah, and I don’t burn money if I don’t play, either…
“THE JACKPOT IS UP TO 30-MILLION NOW! YOU BETTER GET A TICKET! YA CAN’T WIN IF YA DON’T PLAY!”
I join in the lottery pools at work, not because I think we’ll win, but because I can’t bear to imagine the horror of having everybody at work win the fucking lottery but me.
Gambling is like alcohol, some is fun but you need to learn your limits.
If you go into gambling thinking ‘I’m gonna make 100 dollars!’ you’re gambling wrong. If you go into gambling thinking ‘I’m gonna spend 100 dollars.’ you’re gambling correctly.
That’s exactly how I treated my trip. “This trip is going to cost 400 dollars and not a penny more.” The fact that it didn’t was just a happy coincidence.
Same here. Went with friends mainly so I could get free AC and free food for the day and put a $10 bill into a slot. Won $999.99 and never cared to gamble again lol
I have quite the similar tale. And that was that for me as well.
I was going to ask if you were Australian. Be sure to post this on your local instance
The only gambling I do is buying lottery tickets when I’m having the worst urges to kill myself. A little trick to wait just a bit longer. “You can wait until you get the results, it’s only couple days”, and then the worst urge manages to pass in that time. It’s pretty pathetic
doing what you need to in order to keep on surviving is the opposite of pathetic. it takes a lot of courage to keep persisting despite the horrors of our world
Nah, you hold on to whatever hope you have. Stay with us
I think that’s actually a pretty neat trick. So long as not winning doesn’t feel even more crushing.
You should get like a low maintenance pet, like a fish, snake, or lizard.
Oh I have a half of a zoo here already, it’s what’s keeping me around
I stopped smoking weed during the week so that I had something to look forward to on the weekends. It’s pretty pathetic
That’s smart, it’s a form of dopamine loading, you deny yourself immediate rewards and that builds anticipation, also it lowers your baseline dopamine so that even small rewards feel meaningful, this way you stay off the headonism treadmill and conserve your weed which saves money
not pathetic imo. whatever gets you through the week and allows you to keep surviving is perfectly valid!
I feel the same way with benedryl in that I think of all this shit, fuck shot, but I don’t look at it cuz that illegal in my places, so I just think in darkness as the benedryl make happening better tho my gemson doesnt get hard anymore…
getting ads
Can’t relate.
…and you can, too, lemmy users!
I’ve found you can make anyone your suster in your head when the need arises as I do rise to top the thot
Me blocking ads like Neo and they still keep spawning 😭
Gambling used to be illegal because it’s addictive & destructive. I’m not sure when it became legal & so ubiquitous, but I miss the days when it was illegal & could only be done underground. Gambling was illegal because it’s addictive & destructive.
When The House is also The White House, they can do as they please.
When you make gambling illegal, you create a mafia or the equivalent, over and over and over again, no exceptions.
The mafia is even MORE destructive than gambling alone for many reasons.
Creating well-funded black markets is always a mistake, one that has been re-learned many times.
Not to mention, throwing people in dungeons for gambling is counterproductive, destructive, morally bankrupt, and flat-out evil
Addictions abound, everywhere. It’s part of being human and that’s okay. Control your urge to control others… it’s wrong and also an addiction. Power addiction is a well-recorded phenomenon.
Gambling seems to me like one of the most destructive addictions out there. If you have money you can pretty much consume as much drugs as you want and still have money. Gambling is the one addiction that scales with your income and can leave pretty much anyone homeless no matter where you start from. It’s terrible
Honestly idk if I have the gene, but I do have anxiety and that seems to be enough.
you watch ads?
I am this person. How anyone could be interested is beyond me.
Boomers with too much time amd money, cos they could afford to retire at 50 and still have enough money to waste on stupid things
I was going to ignore this but God I really hate the ignorance in this statement. I’m genx. Gambling affects everyone. There are plenty of kids and teenagers and christ that’s who’s being targeted.
Yeah - the old, retired people wasting money on slots is definitely a thing, but another side of the market are people who are desperate and don’t see any way of elevating themselves out of poverty except to win big.
And gambling companies are 100% willing to take advantage of those people and take whatever they have.
Yeah if anything gambling is the hot new addiction for young people. Gen Z drinks less, does less drugs, and even fucks less, but they gamble more. As a millennial I remember when gambling was mostly old people at casinos, but that’s not the face of modern gambling. These days it’s online casinos and sports betting apps. It’s increasingly stuff like polymarket.
Yeah boomer hate is in vogue, we would have thought only boomers would get distracted from class wars by gen wars.
Exactly, they’re trying to get the new generations as interested as the ones on the way out. It’s addictive and now there’s algorithms to make you ‘win’ just enough to stay hooked. That combined with being able to gamble on more than stocks, there’s bound to be a huge shift either direction.
I think it’s because it’s much more visible in boomers as they’re more likely to be gambling in casinos whereas I’d bet (ha) the majority of betting is online these days.
Go into any casino and see what the age distribution is, in my experience the majority are boomers.
I never knew gamlering like some but I know it is in my brain, as when I ate out of garbage in homeless i was like “each one is scratch offer” and so it was like tickets evety time I look in can
You get ads?
I make ass, reel good ads to, like this one! All the curious soles want to cum to my island, not associated wit other well-know islands
I probably dont have the gene, but I dont feel cool for not clicking an ad. What I mostly feel is rage that the promotions are so obviously geared towards getting the potentially addicted to try it by offering $100’s of free (bonus) bets.
And at the end they have the audacity to mention a helpline.
I’m pretty sure they’re legally required to display the helpline. No idea how the requirement has survived the current U.S. admin so far, but if these companies had their way, their victims would not be getting help
If the helpline hurt their bottom line, they’d have found a way around it by now.
Probably because Trump’s current casino of choice is Polymarket.
