Gambling
There's a gripping article in Rolling Stone from two weeks ago: There’s Now a Casino in Everyone’s Pocket. For Some Young Men, It’s a Near-Fatal Gamble: Americans gambled $150 billion through online sportsbooks last year. Far too many lost nearly everything.
The way sports gambling has embedded itself into the business of sports has been sickening to watch over the last five years. It's impossible to get away from. Those businesses, like everything in the gambling (and lottery) industry, are based on mathematical certainty. They have a build-in advantage, often substantial, on every bet placed with them. And yet tens of millions of people still believe they're smart enough to overcome that disadvantage.
They're not.
The number of sports gamblers who make money over time is so rare as to be almost unicorns. I don't mean average people; I mean professional gamblers. It's incredibly difficult to pick any sport against a points line because the line is set with such precision. Parlays? Forget it. It's ludicrous to even entertain.
What the article dives into is gambling on college campuses, but who is really surprised? Advertisements for gambling carpet bomb young people. Of course it has an effect. Particularly with "microbetting" (essentially, betting on a short-term moment in a game).
Like many things now, it's hugely discouraging. We seem to have lost the will as a nation to regulate anything, and there are real consequences for our abdication of responsibility.
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