- Joined
- Feb 10, 2018
Read "Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas", by Natasha Dow Schüll. Gambling addiction, especially the kind DSP has where he's transacting money into in-game currency and just pulling over and over, puts the addict in a total zone of learned powerlessness, gambling not to win, but just to keep putting money in the machine, to have control over one thing in their life and blot out everything else. There's little to no difference in gambling the way DSP does and gambling in Vegas—both slot machines and WWE Champions are both designed to trigger the same impulses in a person to keep them coming back (to the point where, to either the designer or the addict, winning too often, or even in the middle of a "zone", is more disappointing than elating).Frankly, a part of me just refuses to believe that Phil is spending that much money on this, when he's in this current situation.
I suppose I just don't understand how terrible gambling addiction can be, but... Yeah. If y'all have any documentaries or articles about gambling addiction, I'd appreciate it.
Gambling addicts gamble for the experience of timing out the world, having control over one thing in their lives—not whether they win, or lose, but whether they choose to keep playing—and casinos and apps alike are designed with a hyper-focused intensity on getting the player in a psychological place where the game is the safe thing, and it's the *rest of the world* that's dangerous, expensive, and volatile.
From the outside it's fucking alarming to look at how much money of his contributor's is going straight into the game, but for him it's just the continuation of an existing psychological support system where neither time nor money has meaning and the demands of real life melt away.