Age checks to “protect the children” from porno, nothing done for gambling.
I’m curious what hooks people with gambling. Trying to prevent exposure feels like security through obscurity.
To me gambling is boring but that’s not helpful for people vulnerable to its hooks.
The “exposure” has been every mobile and multiplayer game for the last 15 years being loaded with it.
It’s no surprise that they eventually start gambling with real money. It’s like having adverts for BetFred in between episodes of Bluey.
Sure, but how does that relate to my comment regarding hooks?
I understand exposure. I’m not disputing that that’s a problem. Like, no shit, priming children to gamble is bad. I assumed that didn’t need stating.
What I’m interested in is what specifically about gambling is it that appeals to or targets those susceptible to it. I am not susceptible and find it actively boring so I was hoping to get some other perspectives to better understand that side of the issue.
Edited to add some clarity because my question came off as snarky. I feel like we need the opposite of sarcasm tags on here - something to say “sincere” or “actual question, not being a dick, honest”.
That’s the hook isn’t it. They’ve been doing it for years, no harm done.
That’s how most addictions seem to start anyway.
Plenty of people have the same exposure and are not hooked by it. That’s my point. I’m happy to be rid of the exposure, I’m not defending it, but it doesn’t address what makes a subset of people susceptible to it. My general point is that if the strategy boils down to “make sure people don’t find out gambling is an option” then I think it’s a pretty primitive strategy.
Let’s be clear, I don’t think advertising this garbage is in anyway okay, however there’s probably a lot more we can do than simply reducing exposure to adverts. Banning gambling outright seems like it wouldn’t really work (prohibition, etc…) but there’s probably more levers that we could use. Possibly taxing the ever-loving crap out of gambling companies for a start, but this kind of policy isn’t my area and I defer to people with the background.
Yeah but actually addressing the route cause of addiction would require isolating the genes responsible and removing them, which is basically eugenics, no?
The other way of combating this would be for quality of life to increase dramatically across the board for everyone, as debilitating addiction is a trauma/stress response. But no government is going to do this, so it’s probably going to be eugenics if it is attempted.
Do we have the data backing up that it’s genetic?
Edit: Someone doesn’t like me asking…
It was not a rhetorical question. If we know susceptibility to gambling is genetic that changes the approach we need to take as a society.
I don’t know, honestly I was just guessing it was linked to various gene expressions. Many folk with adhd are very susceptible addictions, so I was kinda assuming if there was a gambling gene so to speak, it would be linked to that.
a few different reasons, some get a thrill from the risk (similar to people who do physically dangerous things like bungee jumping), some are desperate for money, some see it as a get-rich-quick thing
to me, it’s a tax on hope
I was in Chess Club at school (I know, I know, quite the jock!). We played chess. Then we got bored of chess and played backgammon. And backgammon without a bet is dull, so we started gambling. Then gambling became the point of playing. Then we moved on to poker.
I remember one poker hand. The deck was made up of about five different packs of cards. Jokers, black twos, one-eyed jacks, bedside queens, and suicide kings were all wild. I ended up with a hand of five aces. Two were real aces, three were wild cards. I had to raise. I mean, how can you not raise with five aces? What is the point of playing poker if you don’t raise with five aces?
Sadly, two other people also had five aces and one of them had three real aces and only two wild cards so they won the hand.
I lost £20 on that single hand and hated every single moment of playing it because somehow I knew, deep down, that I was going to lose. That was a lot of money for me back then and there were other, far better things I could have dropped it on - LPs were about £5 back then, video games £10.
But, it was a great early lesson on the ‘gotta keep going’ mindset of the gambler combined with the certainty that I was going to lose my money. I’m glad it happened, despite the short term remorse I felt immediately afterwards.
The problem with every gambler I know is they keep track of how much they’ve won but not how much they’ve spent.
Advertising gambling should be illegal
This
They’ve legalized the shit out of it everywhere and gambling companies jumped on it and now people are wondering where it all went wrong
Politicians are the worst
Quite frankly, gambling should be culled kind of like tobacco (although maybe not that harsh). I think they should ban large gambling companies from operating here. Betting shops are fine if they’re independently owned
Why?
Gambling is always bad as it’s just making people think they can win where in realit the vast majority will lose. It’s bait and switch, and having it operating “independently” (from what?) won’t change that.
Gambling is fraud
If you ban it completely, you’re just forcing it underground. My mentality is to make it as least corrupt as possible, but still legal enough to deter underground gambling
Betting was confined to the race track or the football stadium. Now the bookee is in your pocket 24/7. The odds are never in your favor.
Yeah. I think online gambling should be banned. Just keep the bookies open so you don’t get a prohibition problem
Fuck all celebrities and athletes that promote their fans into harmful behavior. It s not like you don’t know what you’re doing. You know, you just don’t care because someone is dangling money in front of your eyes
Sinful and silly, but their parents are probably the same so what guidance could they have besides the wrong kind.
Sinful?
I find it crazy to think these are things real people think, like I always thought it was just Ned Flanders that would consider card games to be sinful and yet here we are.
Saw a few comments like it when Balatro came out. What’s next, uno is sent by the devil to corrupt the youth? Although there is probably more of an argument for that because its a good example of taking an existing card game (crazy eights) and then printing a proprietary deck and charging 10 times as much for it.
All the guidance from like, schools, where they’re taught stuff? Hopefully not that it’s “sinful” but the realities of gambling instead.
But if someone doesn’t tell you it’s morally wrong to take advantage of fools/disturbed individuals that might be putting their whole life savings on red or black (and that you should only reap where you sow and not be greedy in general) and endangering not only themselves but also their families, how are we truly gonna convince someone in a to restrain themselves, specially if they’re in a position of comparative power?
Morally wrong yes, sinful no.
Frankly if someone used a religious framework to justify why something is good/bad it’s safe to say a lot of people will take away from it the exact opposite.
How do you have something being morally wrong without a religious framework
Are you suggesting that all atheists are immoral?
If atheism is true, morality doesn’t exist. Most Atheists still feel some sense of mortality because we do have a knowledge of objective right and wrong. Although one can be misled into thinking some right things are wrong and some wrong things are right, without an infallible moral framework to turn to.
Your second sentence contradicts the rest of your comment.
I think sinfulness and immorality are usually one and the same but perhaps you’re right and I’m overreaching. I’m happy with calling it morally wrong. 👍
No def not, most people I know and myself would be killed under any religious moral system because their entire existence is sin because that’s what’s written, but they’re some of the kindest, most humanist and sane people I’ve met, they just aren’t religious because most religions would want them dead.
Often they have individual moral frameworks that are some variation of the marxism-adjacent maximization of happiness/minimization of suffering or nietzchean fulfillment of potential.
I also have no problem calling it sinful either if it’s a useful shorthand tbf, it’s just words after all.
The punishment for sin is death. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It’s mercy that God’s let you live this long. How shall we escape?
I genuinely cannot tell if you are being facetious or not.
Any religious moral system that says God allows and wants you to murder kind, sane and humane folks can be safely disregarded. What the fuck, lol. Nobody who fears God’s judgment (which is a basic prerequisite to call yourself a monotheist!) can argue for that or act that way; how would you explain that shit to Him? But, you know, people… I mean, the Crusades were framed through “Deus Vult” (and the Zionist neo-Crusades are more or less excused the same way, right?), some things don’t change and all of those bloodthirsty murderers are burning in Hell, I’m pretty sure. 😔
Sin is a religious construct, not an ethical one. One religion considers something a sin, another considers it a sacrament. Unless one is forcing compliance with a single specific religion at a state level it’s not particularly useful.
I’d argue that morality is also a construct but the distinguishing factor is that it is not tied to a specific religion and all the baggage associated with it (such as religion as identity, in-groups, that sort of thing).
My POV: morality is (largely?) innate, and if I lined up 100 people and we really went full Socratic method we’d see it, with only a few ridiculously disturbed and confused people arguing against whatever we acknowledged. It’s just complex, because some things are very case-to-case and people just want moral rulings under 10 words because complexity is scary and they lack discernment (the Germanic “a rule is a rule is a rule and I follow it because I’m a good boy” attitude comes to mind, for instance, which can easily end up in “I was just following orders, I was being a good boy!”), but the vast majority of people are reasonable enough we’d come to an understanding given enough time… in the vacuum of propaganda and brainwashing, ofc.
That’s why there’s only one true religion.
Snake charming?
If someone needs to be told that because it isn’t self evident to them then they aren’t going to respond to someone simply telling them.
