I’ve seen this before, and even when I first saw it, threw up some red flags about it being real. Still funny tho
Lived it before. Casinos exist to fuck with your head. What’s been illuminating for me is the P2W video games that adopt so many of the casino strategies to goad people into constantly feeding money into the machine. Once you start picking up on the queues and triggers coming off your cell phone, you can’t unsee it when you’re standing on the floor of the Bellagio.
It’s fucked how normalised it is for betting and gambling to advertised.
I spent like $2000 playing Star Trek Online. Lockbox keys, lifetime sub, all sorts of ships, items, and boosts. They introduced Mark XIV equipment with a gambling-based crafting system. You could spend dilithium (which you could buy with $) to have a chance to upgrade your equipment.
The straw that broke me? Their shitty customer service. I wanted to gear up an alt and give them the Jem’Hadar battleship with the Jem’hadar attack ship so they could launch the attack ships from it as fighters, which you could do if you had both. Problem was some ships were account bound, and some ships were character bound, and I lost track of which was which. I ended up claiming the box for one of them on the wrong character. Easy fix, right? Well not every MMO is run to the same standard as Blizzard. Craptic absolutely refused to help me. So I cut ties.
It was after that, when I experienceced withdrawal, that I read about gambler’s fallacy and sunken cost fallacy and I really analyzed why it hurt so much to leave behind my addiction. I never went back, because I know that whole game is run like a casino. They do everything they can to hook you in.
Well not every MMO is run to the same standard as Blizzard.
Damning with faint praise.
That’s really unfortunate to hear. I played and enjoyed the game back when it first came out, before they added all the micro transaction stuff. I’ve thought about revisiting it a few times but never have.
this is like someone telling a story of their spiral into alcohol addiction and then you coming in at the end and being like “yeah well I got drunk a few times in college and im fine” lolololol
I’m struggling to see how. At the time the game first came out (when I played it) it was a flat subscription fee to pay, like most MMOs back then. It didn’t have any of the pay to win, micro transactiony gambling bullshit that was described by the person I replied to. It was just the game and the game was fun.
It sounds like it really went full enshitification with lootbox type stuff sometime after I quit so it was a very different experience for each of us.
Yeah, most predatory apps are almost like cheap ripoffs of refined system casinos got down to a science.
I find it particularly terrible that these apps are not age restricted at all. You can’t enter a casino before you are 18 but if it is basically a slot machine with kitties on the smartphone, a 10 year old can play them all day long.
Quitters always quit before they hit the jackpot. Respect the hustle! Sell the wife, sell the kids.
99% of gamblers quit right before they’re about to win big.
… I like those odds.
If you do the math, there is literally 0% chance of winning in most gambling. Especially because of the fact plenty of them are rigged.
Arguably the safer bet if one wants to gamble is stock investing, but only after doing due research and willing to be patient to see its results. For those willing to do CFD stock trading, the person would require not just research and patience, but also nerves of steel not to panic.
But I think that most addicted gamblers don’t like the win, they just want the dopamine hit of playing.
I had friends who used to play online poker in uni. They’d have 5 or 6 screens open at once and just play the dominant strategy for each hand. Was good for some extra beer money.
Also work with a dude who is a former professional poker player. Although when he explained his schedule to me it sounded a lot like a regular job. Good years he could make £40k out of it but not crazy money.
I guess poker is somewhat more predictable compared to other gambling but I am not too familiar with it. But in racing and dice games, plenty of games are rigged or that there simply isn’t chance of winning in many, if not most, bets. I remember doing statistics and probability in school, and one of the correct answers was like zero or close to zero chance. I asked my teacher if that means literally zero chance of winning. She mentioned that that is indeed the case but most gamblers don’t realise this.
With poker the house takes a “rake” from each hand so they get a certain % of whatever is being gambled for hosting. Since the game involved skill they have to do this to ensure they are making money regardless of who wins.
Pretty much every other game is like you describe; people being bad at maths and conditioned to keep going with inconsistently timed rewards.
Isn’t blackjack a game you can also beat the house more easily than other games?
Man, those random rewards makes for some wicked conditioning.
Just one more
lanegame
I went to a casino once because my roommate at the time wanted to go for a bit. He even spotted me $10 because I had no cash on me. Turned that $10 in to $40, paid back the roommate and left with the $30 and never went back.
When i was in Australia, i was kinda surprised how widespread gambling was. There were some gambling machines in almost every pub. I put 5 dollars in a machine and won 50. Never ever gambled again.
Its not so bad in Australia these days, depends on which state you’re tin too but yeah, fuck gamblibg.
It was quite weird to see. People just staring at a machine for hours. Did they change the law?
In Japan, people literally line up around the block at pachinko parlors before they open.
Somehow the vibe is slightly less gross than watching 20 retirees just pressing the slot machine button over and over.
Did they manage to get pokies out of all the AFL clubs yet? Last I paid attention, I think there might have been a couple of holdouts.
It varies state to state with NSW being the worst still:
There’s a study on this… I o py remember it pretty vaguely, but the tl;dr was that if people win at gambling it doesn’t hold much appeal – the initial drive to continue gambling only comes after losses. Something about ‘making up for’ anything you lost drives the addiction behaviour far more. This struck me initially as kinda counter-intuitive (you’d think that people were more motivated by behaviours with positive outcomes, right?) so it always stuck in my head…
Google sunk cost fallacy
No
but you already invested so much effort into this
deleted by creator
You sank
Alas
New response just dropped
This is the reason behind it
Some people are built differently.
I have no impulsion to gamble either. But one of my family members? So much money burned at casinos.
You can only say that you defeated the house once dead
Ken M energy
We are all KenM on this blessed day
speak for yourself
I’m ALL Ken M on this blessed day.
I miss Ken M
It’s kind of nice that some things have carried over from red-it, like the same memes popping up repeatedly, and people in the comments (me) complaining about it.
Surprisingly there are more people who take the jokes as serious. I thought Reddit was the worst it could be.
My partner and half his family have this gambling bug. You can see it in their eyes. You can see it when they win (not that often.) You see it in the veiled “next time we will win” excuses when they lose (most of the time.) I am glad I don’t have …this vice.
ain’t just a river in Egypt~
Oooof
Ouch owie my bank account
I can’t wait to get my heroin today. I’m literally shaking.
Big Smooth Shark energy here, just needs a few more people taking it too seriously
can’t wait to get my food today! I’m literally shaking
You might just be thirsty. So do a little bump of H2O to take the edge off.
I have it the same, but with beer.
You’re only an alcoholic if you can’t afford it, but drink anyway.
He’s not an alcoholic. Alcoholics go to meetings.
Seriously though, if anyone feels they MUST do some optional thing its likely time to take a break. That goes equally for something you consume or something you do.
