It's crazy how normalized gambling became the last 10 or so years.
It used to be really hard to gamble legally. Now it's hard to find someone not pushing "legal gambling" everywhere. Meanwhile, we still can't smoke weed in some parts of the world? What?
Back when we wore onions on our belts sports betting was related to the mafia. Bookies were low level operators, and people who owed money got their legs broken.
Some things never change.
Yeah I thought the onion belts would go out of style by now but here we are today and I’m still as stylish as ever
Gambling will save the economy after the AI bubble bursts! /s
It got intentionally normalized by the Grand Old Party of Christian Family Values because it is very profitable.
And that's one of several reasons Las Vegas is dying.
If you can't watch a sport without a wager, then you're into gambling, not sports.
How exciting is horse racing on its own? (It isn't)
I fucking love horse racing man, and no i dont gamble (anymore lol)
doing it or watching it?
Watching, or going to the racetrack is awesome, i love going to the stables and seeing the horses before they race, but i watch on TV too.
The horsies are very cool and neat! Love seeing them doing their best
In case you still thought the sports industry isn't evil...
Practically all sports stars are perfectly happy to advertise and work with scummy companies (like aforementioned gambling companies), and countries like Israel or UAE. As long as they're paid nice money.
Same for sports events. They'll all happily take money to advertise billionaire pedophiles' companies or terror states.
It's almost impossible to spend any money on sports-related events or merchandise without supporting gambling or contributing towards genocide. Maybe some local ones? Maybe...?
All I needed to know was to pay attention to the terminology and optics of NFL drafts and the power dynamics following it. The fact that those in power are a-okay with problematic stuff like that, strongly suggests they have skewed ethics and likely apply that ethos everywhere.
I never understood how people can enjoy gambling or be addicted to it.
Yeah I get that it’s exciting, but spending money on actual goods and services can be exciting too.
If you find gambling using a $1000 exciting, wouldn’t using that $1000 on other things be even more exciting?
Winning money is only fun because said money can be used for fun. It wouldn’t really be a problem if it was points instead of currency. If what gives gambling its excitement is spending your winnings, just spend money from the get go.
Idk, I just don’t get it.
Same, but many people are wired very, very differently from you and I here.
The diversity of the human mind is truly the most wonderful and terrifying thing about our species.
Gambling addiction is about the high like any other addiction. It comes down to brain chemistry, and personality. There's the high from anticipation, and a second from the payoff just like every addiction. Gambling is just easier than most because it's money, something we all have to use. Like food addiction, it's something we all need to consume.
It’s “intermittent” or “unpredictable reward” coupled with the addict’s brain wiring. The thrill and relief of a win is addictive.
If you’re not wired that way you simply aren’t going to “get it”, same as not really understanding any other addiction - at least in any way other than intellectually.
It's basically a skinner box + the unknown, if I spend $1000 then I've spent $1000, but if I gamble $1000, I could win all this money, or I could lose it all, no one knows, and every time it's new + dangerous. It also just ruins your perspective/ respect for money, because if you gained/lost 20k in an afternoon, what are you going to do go back to working for $20 an hour for half a year for what you made/spent in 2 hours?
I don't gamble, I just buy pallets of equipment at auction in the hopes that I can resell it for a profit.
I'm really hoping that legislation will be in place to curb this sort of thing by the time my kids are old enough to want to watch sports. I'm not thrilled at the prospect of those ads marinating in their young brains, and I don't relish the thought of trying to explain to a credulous 8-year-old that we can't win millions of dollars betting on hockey games.
Hoping is different than expecting, unfortunately.
But you can win it's practically gaurenteed!
-Ads.
Seriously, why don't these things have warnings on them like cigarettes. I see ads for the local casino that say stuff like "riches are just 3 exits down," it's crazy. Should also say "GAMBLING IS ADDICTIVE AND YOU WILL LOSE MONEY" or something.
They do have that in Australia
But of course, they rely on people thinking "yeah, but that won't happen to me because I'm somehow different"
They're obviously the dumbest
What you're hoping for is that governments go back to protecting people instead of being used by the rich to transfer wealth from the citizenry.
Everyone knows gambling has zero social benefit and does a lot of harm. But none of that matters because you can show up to a few congressmen with a few thousand dollars and they'll do what you tell them, and no other congress critters will get in their way because every other congresscritter wants support for their grifts.
Government is working hard to find a million ways to redistribute wealth upward. Public advertising of gambling is just one more sign of corruption.
I switched to UK streams of F1 for this exact reason. It’s out of hand.
I just paid for F1TV via an Indian Apple account. Very cheap and better commentary than SkySports. Plus it has extra analysis videos.
I swear half of these gambling websites end their ads with "this is not a gambling website". I've never looked into in (because fuck that I'm not going on those sites) but I assume it's some mobile game shit where you buy gems or something and can't actually win anything tangible.
Fun fact: you CAN win money because they operate in a legal gray area calling themselves "prediction markets".
Basically you buy percentage shares in an outcome and if that outcome happens all of those that bought the shares get a payout. At least that's my understanding of it.
Do I do it? Fuck no.
Do I know more than a few people that do? Literally more than half of my coworkers do and a few people in my friend group do.
Bonus "fun" fact: they're not limited to just gambling. If you managed to miss it, not too long ago people were gambling on events in the Iran War.
If it wasn't obvious I'm very much against this practice. Shit's fucked.
The last time I looked, there were also legal casinos using a similarly transparent schtick.
What they do is that you don't directly win money from gambling. Everything is presented as if it's related to a sweepstakes, because sweepstakes are a legal version of gambling.
It works something like, you can pay to get entries in a sweepstakes, and I think you can even gamble with your sweepstakes entries to try to get more entries. Then because you entered the sweepstakes, you automatically win, and the sweepstakes pays out in fake money like gems. Then you can also gamble with the fake money. Finally, the casinos will buy the fake money from you using real money.
I may not have gotten this explanation exactly right, but it's in the ballpark.
Let's all cut cable TV.
Oh wait, I already did.
I've never had cable in my entire life. Parents never paid for it, and I got so sick of watching planes crash into buildings 25 years ago that I stopped watching it entirely. It didn't take long before advertising drove me crazy, and I've never been back.
I've been arguing with strangers online ever since. I should get back into books.
The only reason I have cable TV is it was literally cheaper to get it packaged with my Internet than just getting the Internet alone.
Its not about spending money, its about anticipation and excitement. It turns something that people enjoy like watching sport, and gives a personal investment. It goes from, "id like carolina to win" to "it means something to me if Carolina wins."
People who are addicted to gambling arent gambling to buy things. Theyre addicted to gambling. Theyre gambling so they can gamble more. Its like people who are addicted to drugs. Eventually the soft stuff doesnt hit like it used to, and the need bigger doses or harder drugs. They need to win more money, so they can gamble more money.
Low effort comic from someone who buys upvotes on Reddit. Keep that pay-to-win shit on Reddit.
I'm far from a pizzacake fan, but this is the stance you take? Like, my dude, it's a comic, almost in it's purist form. You'd probably see something almost exactly like this in a 100 year old newspaper archive.
This isn't Reddit.
Source?
I just can't imagine pulling something like cable TV into your home intentionally.
Imagine paying for TV that has tons of ads in it.
During a brief period when Youtube's anti-adblocker tech was one step ahead of my adblockers, I had to watch 20 seconds of an ad before I could skip it. And that alone was filling me with a dangerous amount of rage. (The only thing it made me want to buy was lots of explosives.) I really don't understand how people tolerate watching normie TV where a solid 1/3 of the airtime is dedicated to obnoxious ads.
Yea man I barely see any beer commercials anymore. Won’t anyone think of the alcohol companies??
What sport are you watching? That’s literally the other commercial.
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