We are living in a casino

First they came for our mobile apps, then they came for our videogames, and now, it seems pretty much every aspect of our lives is being re-oriented around gambling. Who are the players — inside and outside of tech — that have spent the past decade building out “Casino World”? Edward Ongweso, Jr. joins us to talk about why we should be panicking about a world where everything is gamified, and what’s in it for the people trying to run the floor. Our guest Edward Ongweso, Jr. writes the Tech Bubble newsletter, and you can check out the piece we referenced, “Trapped in the Maw of A Stillborn God,” here. He also hosts This Machine Kills, which you can find wherever you listen to podcasts. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: http://multitude.productions/ads. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admirals Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi. Sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at aa.com.

• 0:26Ryan Broderick?

  To start things out, what's like the craziest bet you've ever made?

• 0:30Speaker 02

  I mean, maybe like, you know, little bets if like a friend is gonna do something or not do something, but I really don't have any.

• 0:36Ryan Broderick?

  Any you're willing to share now?

• 0:39Speaker 02

  Maybe like the equivalent of parlays and like trying to predict someone's exactly what someone is trying to do.

• 0:45Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  And it was a friend who was kind of spiraling and so they went on, you know, two, maybe three dates, it felt like, almost every day.

• 0:57Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  And that's about how each date would go, basically. If they're gonna bring them home, if they were gonna leave in the middle of it, if they were gonna see this person again. I think that's like maybe the only time I've actually done like some real, actual gambling and kept like a running tally and involved multiple people in the pool for this bet.

• 1:17Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, there was like multiple people in the pool?

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20Speaker 03

  You're a very good friend.

• 1:22Ryan Broderick?

  That's good. That's really good.

• 1:40Ryan Broderick?

  I'm Ryan Broderick and joining us, unfortunately, because you can't stop interrupting our shows, is our producer Grant Irving. This is Panic World, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually, reality. And today, we're talking about a reality warp that has sort of hit every part of life and is also kind of difficult to describe because of that, right? There's a lot of ways the world is bad and changing, and we talk about those things all the time, but there's this other thing that's totally happening off to the side that's so pervasive, it doesn't even really have a term, but we're gonna, we're gonna call it Casino World. Today, we want to explore how our whole economy and our lived experience is now either centered on gambling or meant to feel like a casino.

• 2:22Ryan Broderick?

  Joining us is Edward Anguoso Jr., the author of the fantastic Substack, The Tech Bubble, and I mean this in the best way. He is a vicious writer, and I am so excited to have him on the show. I want to start by running something by you. Would you say the last, I don't know, decade has been defined by tech companies running worldwide social experiments, using our data and surveillance to essentially kind of like keep us inside of a digital casino? Does that feel correct to you?

• 2:51Speaker 02

  I'd say that's the best part.

• 2:52Ryan Broderick?

  It's the best part?

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55Ryan Broderick?

  Well, the reason I ask you is because you've written pretty extensively about this. You've written about sort of like how gambling has infected most of the technology we use, and you put a lot of these thoughts together into a piece that, I mean, the title is like one of the best titles of anything I've read in a long time, which was "Trapped in the Maw of a Stillborn God." So first, can you explain that metaphor for our listeners who may not have read your piece?

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think, I think one way to think about it is, a lot of the technology today is being delivered in ways that are its private profit and socialized losses. And we're told that, you know, even though these technologies are corroding the social fabric, our the environment, our politics, cultural production, people's livelihoods, that you have to commit to them because they're on the break, they're on the verge of a breakthrough that will make all of our lives immensely better.

• 3:52Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  And so it feels like we are being constantly told that, you know, we're about to give birth to this god that will, you know, save everything, it'll consume the entire world and birth it out, or shit something out that's entirely new. But instead, it's just, it's stillborn. It never actually comes. It's, and it is, you know, grotesque, you know, have dead, have alive thing that I feel like is consuming and not actually birthing or renewing anything.

• 4:21Ryan Broderick?

  So I think every tech moment promises us ease or fun, but ends up really only gamifying something that doesn't need to be a game. In fact, oftentimes, it makes it feel like this insidious attention or money suck. For the normal person who may not even notice that they are living inside of a perpetual casino, like, what bothers you the most?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  I would say the idea that everything would be better off if there was a market for it. Whether that is, you know, a microtransaction, whether that's like something that might have otherwise been a favor, or, you know, maybe that's something that you would have delayed gratification of because you didn't know you could get it instantaneously.

• 5:06Ryan Broderick?

  Like Klarna payments for DoorDash?

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Yes, which are now turned into a financial security.

• 5:13Ryan Broderick?

  So I just bought like a ton of Klarna DoorDash debt. Like, I bought like a hundred million, and I'm gonna try, I'm trying to offload that. So if you want to buy it, like, we can just keep passing the Klarna debt around for food delivery.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  There is nothing I'd rather stay away from, touch less. You know, there are few things in this world than burrito debt and studios on burritos.

• 5:37Ryan Broderick?

  Right, right.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, for the, for the offline, can you guys explain what this horrible thing is?

• 5:42Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I mean, it is as horrible as it sounds. Um, Klarna, the sort of delayed payment processor, uh, has teamed up with DoorDash. So now you can pay multiple interest-free installments of your DoorDash meal.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  It's really beautiful. It's actually gonna save the world. And you should, you should, you know, there's nothing wrong here. There's nothing that could possibly go wrong, I think.

• 6:05Ryan Broderick?

  I am sad to say that I used Klarna recently for Airbnb, and I was like, this is so good. I should never, ever do this again because this, this feeling is dangerous, actually.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's part of how they get you because of the lack of friction, right? I think that's also another thing that I really do think is part of the problem with the introduction of these apps. There's a confusion with like making something better or more optimal or efficient with the lack of friction, you know, there's sometimes there needs to be, sometimes you need to drive 50 miles to get to the casino instead of having it in your pocket.

• 6:40Ryan Broderick?

  No, this is something we've talked about on the show a lot, which is like sort of the difference between, you know, a dumb rumor you hear at a bar or like, you know, when you're in high school versus a mass panic or like a witch hunt online is the friction. And I think a lot of the things that we sort of complain about the internet, you know, creating, they're not new, but the frictionless environment that we're now experiencing them is completely new. And that is sort of the heart of it, I think.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I definitely do. I mean, that's part of what happened during the pandemic with the rise of these financial tech firms and with crypto. I mean, you had people who are not just being unloaded into platforms and apps that were allowing them to trade crypto or to participate in pumping up coins or to participate in stock trading, right? But you also had the friction being removed in terms of being brought into communities that would encourage you to go deeper and deeper down this rabbit hole. Advertising was a bit more direct and encouraging you to, you know, try and 100x an investment by putting your life savings into it or believing that you guys were smart enough to organize like your own sort of pump and dump scheme.

• 7:51Ryan Broderick?

  So you're not holding any fart coin right now?

• 7:53Speaker 02

  No.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Not a one.

• 7:56Ryan Broderick?

  Well, we're going to talk about sort of how the pandemic did absolutely escalate all of this, but I want to start at the very beginning of, I guess, like the modern sort of start to this, because obviously, America and gambling go way back, right? We've, we've always sort of had this social issue that we don't really know what to do with. But in 2018 is when things really get started, because that's when the Supreme Court makes mobile sports betting legal. And after seven years of this sort of environment, here's where, here's where we've ended up. So last year, sports betting apps spent $400 million on ads. And brought in about $14 billion, according to ESPN. In the states that allow app-based betting, bankruptcies increased by 28%. I don't think that's good, right? That seems bad.

• 8:42Ryan Broderick?

  In Oregon alone, $57 million was waged just on ping pong.

• 8:52Ryan Broderick?

  Seems bad. And speaking of bad, there are obviously a ton of downstream social ailments that come from, you know, the increase in gambling. So intimate partner violence increases with mobile sports betting by about 8% to 9%. And our researcher tried to sort of like create a, our researcher Adam tried to create like a total for like lives ruined by the expansion of digital gambling. And the estimation we have is about 7 to 10 million people have ruined their lives every year since we made mobile betting legal.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Sounds right.

• 9:27Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. It seems fucking staggering.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Gambling is an activity, whether it's physical or digital, that is designed to try to get you into a flow state, a lot of researchers will call it, where your sole concern is not winning, but playing constantly, right?

• 9:46Ryan Broderick?

  I heard this where like, so yeah, I should say upfront, like I do not, I always phrase it this way, I do not have the gambling brain shape. It like, it stresses me out and I actually don't enjoy the flow state. But I had read this incredible thing where like a study was done where gamblers actually start to feel physical, like anxiety or even like physical pain in certain senses when they win.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:10Ryan Broderick?

  But the losing flow state is like, if you were to sort of say like, you know, you're at the table or you're at the machine and you're pulling the slot machine, like that feels, that feels better. Winning interrupts the flow and that is actually what's really, I think, like hurts people.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that is, and I think it's, it's worth thinking about the design of the place as you're getting into the flow and the design of the game once you win, right? The design of the place, when you get in, the shape of the seats, the feel, the lights, the-

• 10:37Ryan Broderick?

  You've got your diaper on.

• 10:40Ryan Broderick?

  You're just crushing it. You're just cranking it in your diaper.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  That should be their slogan. They should put that on there. Come crank it in your diaper.

• 10:54Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, no, I'm with you. I am with you. Yeah, exactly.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  But when you win, right? Disrupt it. It's immediately disrupted. Incredibly loud siren, incredibly bright and flashing lights. And part of that is to attract other people so that they're like, oh, you know, they may think going in consciously it's about winning, but then realize as they get into it, it's not about winning. And the act of gambling is to, you know, kind of train you so that you care less about winning and more about gambling in of itself. I think that this is even more dangerous if you have it in your phone and not like, you know, a few dozen miles you have to drive away to reach.

• 11:31Ryan Broderick?

  I, I, yes. And one other thing that we sort of discovered as we were putting this episode together is that not only does like the easy access of gambling on your phone just make it just impossible to separate yourself from that flow state. Because of the way the internet is structured, it has had a bizarre domino effect where people are now trying to essentially make other things feel like gambling. So one of the, I think the most important developments, you know, in, let's say, gamble world, I don't know. We need, we need a name for what this is by the end of the episode, but would be Reddit's Wall Street Bets.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:04Ryan Broderick?

  Which was created by a guy who, who literally has admitted he wanted to make day trading feel like gambling. And in your piece, you quote New York Times writer Jay Caspian King, who wrote, the creator of Wall Street Bets could no longer really tell the difference between buying cryptocurrencies, betting on sports or trading stocks, because they've become part of a mega gamble with payouts that could change your life. And I think this is key, like the complete flattening of any kind of financial gamble into one thing that we don't even have language for.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  One of the, I think probably we'll look back and see one of the more destructive developments was the, the creation of these.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Of these fintech tools Sure. Whose goals are ostensibly to democratize finance, right? And the argument is that, you know, if you want to be able to trade a stock, if you want to be able to move a bunch of money, you should be able to do so without interference from the federal government, without interference from regulators who are being paternalistic, right? But I think, you know, a few researchers have kind of talked about how the advent of fintech is actually part of a larger struggle where financial firms

• 13:31Speaker 02

  and, you know, well-capitalized individuals who start these firms have been trying to figure out, okay, how do we get rid of the regulations that have been in place since the New Deal, which makes certain kinds of levels of profit-making illegal? Mm-hmm. And which, if we were able to tap into, we could then create new businesses, new ventures, new relations, new platforms, new products that would realize even greater returns than some of the things that we do have today, right? And part of this comes to us, and that's, I think, really the real core and the bleeding heart of these, or the beating heart of these fintech firms, right? They are asking, how can we make it so that the relationship you have with

• 14:16Speaker 02

  our platform is one that used to be illegal, but is much more profitable, either because we get more access to your funds, or either because we can put you in a more exploitative position, or because we can offer you a product which, where you're gonna take the bath on, you know, that we're gonna rinse you on, but we're gonna make out like bandits. How is it that we're able to structure that? And a lot of the times, it's by putting responsibility on the individual, but spending lots and lots of money designing something that is as appeasing and as appealing and as flow-like as possible for someone to use. And I think a lot of the financial, you know, gambling experiments have been attempts to figure out what is the How can you, how can you take X, Y, or Z and turn it into that?

• 15:01Speaker 02

  How can you turn stock trading and turn it into that? How can you turn art trading or art viewing into this? How can you turn experiences, as we saw them try to do with making NFTs of like proof that you attended concerts?

• 15:14Ryan Broderick?

  Yes.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Trade them on secondary markets. You know, how can we take more things that in of themselves are not an asset, not a commodity, or are, but figure out how to make it so you gamble on them in one way or another?

• 15:27Ryan Broderick?

  It's, it's funny you brought up the, the New Deal, the hundred, hundred years worth of financial regulations. Because I do think it's part of it and something that's really overlooked when we're talking about crypto, because crypto, to me, is like a very uniquely American thing. In the late 2010s, I was living outside of America and I, you know, I was traveling around Europe and I remember trying to explain what something like Venmo was to Europeans. And they were like, what the fuck are you talking about? Why can't your bank just do that? And I, and I do think that's a really crucial point here because our banking system was so old and so unable to digitize that a lot of private entities got involved. This is why Bitcoin was so exciting for people because, you know, you'll, you'll talk to

• 16:12Ryan Broderick?

  Bitcoin maxies and they're like, oh, yeah, you can trade money on the internet. And the rest of the world's like, yeah, we do that all the time. You know, there was even a service, you know, that in Brazil that everyone was using when I was living there called Peaks. Like every country has something like this and it works usually really well. And because our regulations could not keep up with the internet, they fell by the wayside, which I think is why we're now seeing Americans, specifically American capitalism, turn into unregulated gambling because our regulators could not keep up. And, and a certain environment, you know, it's like that old saying, you know, you let a Nazi walk into your bar, it becomes a Nazi bar. If one casino enters your unregulated financial system, your unregulated financial system becomes a casino.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:55Ryan Broderick?

  And after the break, we're going to be talking about this entire concept of the internet as Las Vegas, capitalism as a casino, and how that plays into the manosphere culture, which means, yeah, we're, we're going to be talking about Dave Portnoy again.

• 17:13Ryan Broderick?

  But first, a word from our sponsors. Fucking some kind of brewery in the North End or something, I don't know. Some fucking plate, "Oh, look at me, I'm a fucking Boston Brewery and I'm gonna sell a Detroit-style pizza." Ever heard of this before? Oh, my God. Fucking, "Here's your IPA, you fucking douchebag."

• 17:31Speaker 00

  Hey, Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admirals Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi. Sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at aa.com.

• 17:58Speaker 04

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• 18:25Ryan Broderick?

  So we talked about Dave Portnoy in our episode about whether Trump's base will continue to support him, but honestly, we've just been talking about him way more than I want to. I swear to God, I don't want to keep bringing him up, but he has unfortunately become the, like, main character of our current moment. But I do think, I do think, aside from my personal obsession with this man, that his rise does really tie into this episode. And it's all about how he turned betting into a identity.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  You know, I know he's a colorful guy. I know he does this thing where he rates a bunch of pizzas that he eats.

• 19:04Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Does Barstool Sports? Uh, that's the limit of my knowledge about him.

• 19:12Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, great. You're gonna learn all kinds of things about him now. I should also say here that I was born in a town next to Swampscut. Uh, my hometown has a, has a hundred, 200-year-old rivalry with his town. Uh, so I hated him even before I knew how much of a piece of shit he was. So, I want, I want credit there. But also, my family unfortunately really likes him and we have at multiple times watched his pizza videos, like, at the table. Anyways, uh, he's a big deal in Massachusetts unfortunately, and every time I go home, I have to hear about him. But, the major thing about Dave Portnoy is that, so he is the, he's the CEO and founder of Barstool Sports. For a while, it was quietly one of the most influential men's spaces online and managed to not have, you know, direct

• 19:55Ryan Broderick?

  ties to like, a burgeoning neo-Nazi movement in America. But that was up until recently, when uh, Portnoy discovered that he does have actual Nazis in his audience and is now fighting with them. Uh, but, on the whole, it is something, like Barstool to me is something from a very early era of the internet. It feels very, still kind of untouched by the modern culture war in a way. And they're very important, uh, Barstool and Portnoy are very important because they found this banner that they can put sports app gamblers, video game gamblers, crypto bros, all under. Do you know, sort of like, what his bit was that helped him

• 20:35Ryan Broderick?

  kind of like, become the face of, of consumer, consumer investment, consumer gambling?

• 20:42Speaker 02

  No. Was it something related to Robin Hood?

• 20:44Ryan Broderick?

  Yes. It is. Eventually. But it starts with just being a specific kind of guy, you know? All right, uh, to wrap your head around this, let's play a clip, uh, which I think really paints a picture of his personality.

• 20:56Speaker 05

  If you don't like me, I'm gonna not like you back 10 times harder. If you hit me with a feather, I'm gonna try to hit you with a sledgehammer.

• 21:03Ryan Broderick?

  He's essentially like a, like a, like a, like a WWE character.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I could, I could see him being a heel. I could see it.

• 21:11Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, he is, he is, the, the, he looks the way the boss Accent sounds.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:18Ryan Broderick?

  That's sort of his vibe. So in 2003, he starts Barstool Sports as a gambling tips magazine in the Boston area.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Sick.

• 21:26Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it blows up. Um, yeah, super sick. In 2007, it pivots into a blog focusing more on lifestyle. And it's kind of like in that era with like the chive. Do you remember the chive?

• 21:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 21:40Ryan Broderick?

  Keep calm and chive on. You didn't know, but they would do like lists of like the hottest babes on Reddit this month.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:48Ryan Broderick?

  That, that kind of thing.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 21:49Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, Barstool had their own version where they would steal random women's photographs from Facebook and they would call them the local smoke show of the day.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Okay. I do know this. My roommate's sister was on, was on that.

• 22:03Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, really?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:06Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, I feel like I should, hold on. I might not be conveying the, the attitude right. Let me, um, the local smoke show of the day, dude. Yeah. Absolutely, dude. Um, so they, they kind of recreate the idea of like what a jock is. In, uh, in the 2000s and in 2000, very Tucker Maxx. Uh, in 2011, they have a blog post titled Kobe Better Not Have Raped Alex Morgan. Written by David Portnoy, who wrote, it's one thing to stick your dick in a random, Grant, do I have to read this? I don't want to read this. This is disgusting, actually. Um, basically he's just arguing, he's, he's a, he's a, he's a guy who doesn't think that women should come forward with sexual allegations. Um, he.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  This is tracking. This is tracking.

• 22:48Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, yeah. In two, in 2011, he, god damn it. So in 2011, he posts naked photos of Tom Brady's two-year-old son, writing, quote, "Check out the howitzer on Brady's kid."

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. What the fuck?

• 23:04Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, in 2012, uh,

• 23:09Ryan Broderick?

  They start these parties called blackout parties. And he's like defending them being, and he says, "Just to make friends with the feminists, I'd like to reiterate that we don't condone rape of any kind at our blackout parties in mid-January. However, if a chick passes out, that's a gray area, though." So it's like, this is the exact kind of guy that is unfortunately perfect for the environment that's created. It's all under the umbrella of betting on sports, so they, they come for the betting, but they stay for the wrestling personalities and keep funding the operation through betting. And over time, when we think about crypto bros, or guys getting, you know, massive parlays that they're betting on, which I, I think I understand what that is,

• 23:52Ryan Broderick?

  we're even talking about somebody who could be like obsessed with credit card points. Barstool's mentality, their politics, their overall shittiness is now attached to that kind of guy. The kind of guy who's always trying to win big. And it's hard to describe how huge they've become because they created their own ecosystem. And in a lot of ways, you can't really measure it against the rest of the internet.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:13Ryan Broderick?

  So in 2017, ESPN plans to adapt a Barstool show into an actual broadcast. It's canceled after one episode because of what they were saying on air. And that's when they go all in on podcasting, which as we know, had no political impact on this most recent election. It's not like this one moment eventually creates the entire media landscape of now.

• 24:39Ryan Broderick?

  And that's when we get to the Robinhood stuff, because in the COVID, like, early pandemic lockdown, Portnoy gets a Robinhood account and a Twitch account, and he just starts streaming his terrible Robinhood investments. Let's play a clip.

• 24:56Speaker 06

  And finding himself with a lot of money and a lot of time, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy took to the Robinhood app and started a revolution.

• 25:03Speaker 05

  I realized that the stock market... Has no effect on the real world and vice versa. That it's its own universe, that the wise guys on Wall Street, the pinstripe suits has the thing all rigged for their benefit. And once my brain adapted and was able to figure it out quickly, I realized thoughts only go up. I will probably revert back to sports gambling, but to be honest, it's not very different. They're both forms of gambling.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Wow, that's new. I didn't, I didn't know anyone was doing that.

• 25:33Ryan Broderick?

  Yes. So in between the pizza reviews and all the other kinds of content he is creating, he gets like, I remember like I was at home in Massachusetts during the pandemic. And like my dad would be watching Portnoy's bets and like using Robin Hood alongside him.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Oh my God.

• 25:49Ryan Broderick?

  He starts going on CNBC during this time as like a financial expert in consumer trading.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Are you serious? Yeah, we got Twitch streamer. David Portnoy on that's okay.

• 26:02Ryan Broderick?

  Yes. And he obviously has a litany of all kinds of scandals and we could go on and on. But I, what I think is really important about Portnoy is that we've talked a lot about kind of like the, the larger social diseases that come with gambling, that gambling represents. But I do think Portnoy is important because he represents this new world of gambling's connection to the, what I think some people have been calling like the masculinity crisis in America. The idea that like there is this cohort of men for whom their identities are all, to put it academically, all super fucked up.

• 26:41Ryan Broderick?

  And now you have these men like David Portnoy who are, who are sort of connecting the risk-taking behavior of gambling with a new sense of masculinity. Does that clock with what you've seen?

• 26:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, that's interesting because I think the way you articulate that, that I feel like I'm seeing.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  An iterative version of that with like Nick Silver's book on gambling, which is trying to say actually risk-taking behavior is not just throwing money at things, but it's constantly calculating where you have an advantage, where it makes sense for you to invest money, and that this can, should, and is increasingly becoming political behavior. And if you think about the world in this way, where you might be maximizing risk or considering different risks, then maybe you can come out ahead in a world that's becoming increasingly casino-friendly. And thinking about on the other end,

• 27:38Speaker 02

  risk-taking as a way to rediscover older forms of masculinity makes sense. You know, makes sense is, I guess, after the fact, is like a move that was made.

• 27:51Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, our president is a casino owner. And it's very easy to see Portnoy as the next iteration of him. You know the type of guy I'm talking about here.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's also the other thing, right? Trump is like a perfect... Trump is almost, you know, history only gives you one of these people every generation. He's like, you know, he's been on WWE. He's a casino guy. He's a reality star, a real estate tycoon. That's like, you know, four different tentacles of the Hydra coming back home.

• 28:21Ryan Broderick?

  Part of the reason I wanted you on to talk about this is because there's this idea that I've had a really tough time articulating for months, if not years at this point, about this sort of like connection between gambling and the unreality of our current political moment. And I don't totally understand how they connect. But, you know, you're talking about sort of walking around Las Vegas. If anyone's walked the Strip, it is a facsimile of a facsimile, in a way, actually, because it's modern Vegas trying to look like older Vegas trying to look like other parts of the world, right? Like, and when I think about like the current, like, sort of

• 29:06Ryan Broderick?

  hyper-capitalistic fascist movement that we're seeing arise in American politics, it feels inseparable in a way, where it's like you are... This is as far as I've ever gotten with this idea. So I'm really hoping you have thoughts here or I'm gonna start rambling.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  No.

• 29:23Ryan Broderick?

  There is something there. There is something, there's some sort of connection between financial risk-taking for the thrill of it and the willingness to believe in a political unreality that is toxic and authoritarian. And I don't understand why.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  I think part of it, and kind of like what you were talking about earlier, was the rolling back deregulation of capitalism leads to unspooling and destabilizing effects of it to the point that it's just all gambling now.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  I think about how so much of the reactionary movement, especially coming out of Silicon Valley, you know, when you really press them down to it, they're essentially saying, "We need to return to a different political economic order because that would yield more profits and lead to more prosperity." And that political economic order needs to be liberated of democracy, it needs to be liberated of minority rights, of liberalism, of feminism, of environmentalism. These are things that get in the way of capitalism moving along. And so we're actually defending it and purifying it. And under that umbrella project of we're defending capitalism and purifying it, to

• 30:40Speaker 02

  go back, are attempts to envision weird futures of capitalism that resemble nothing like the past, but maybe have technology grafted onto it, as well as attempts to make the future look very much like an imagined version of what the past used to be.

• 30:58Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, we're cooking. All right. Yeah, hell yeah, lyric. Yeah, we're doing it. It's happening.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:01Ryan Broderick?

  Dear listener, it's happening in real time, right before you. This is so exciting. Yeah, the idea, I think, is best exemplified by Trumpism, right? So Trump, literally a casino owner, he's obsessed with nostalgia, he's obsessed with the past, make America great again. He is selling you this facade, this fake memory of America. And he's doing it. To distract you. It is the same idea as like sitting in the Venetian and being like, "Wow, I'm in Venice." It's like, "Oh, wow, I'm in this fictitious version of America and I don't care what happens as long as I can live in the fantasy of America that was created by like 1950's Coke ads or whatever that like Trump is selling back to me." But while he's used, but beyond that, you know, behind that,

• 31:45Ryan Broderick?

  you have his intense desire to deregulate the economy. You see this with his own personal enrichment. I mean, he's selling, he's selling Trump branded cellphones right now. He has his own crypto coin. Like, it couldn't be more obvious that Trumpism is, is a multi-level marketing scheme. It is a casino. And nostalgia is the, the, the lifeblood of that. And I wouldn't even say it's nostalgia. It's almost like this fake reality in the, in the exact same way that you can like, dress up a casino to make it feel like this like fun, expensive place that you've never been before. And, and you can continue to live in that fantasy as long as you keep pulling the slot machine. You keep putting down money on cards. Like, that is the idea is you can live in this fantasy bubble version of America if you keep giving me money to do so.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  What is it gonna take to get it so that, you know, you just get the herd out of the way? You get them into some sort of flow state where they-

• 32:36Ryan Broderick?

  Distract them, yes.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  They're doing opioids, they're doing gambling, they're consuming Solom.

• 32:40Ryan Broderick?

  Don't threaten me with a good time, baby. Alright.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Feel like there's something there between the goal of gambling, which is to like kind of engineer this sort of Walking Dead state. And, and the goal of these reactionaries to figure out how can we figure out some sort of status quo where it's stable, that stability built on very deep and intense, you know, inequality.

• 33:07Ryan Broderick?

  If you go against the sort of general theory that gambling is financial risk-taking, which obviously it is, but there's, but if you think of it more as a flow state, or if you think of it as a flow state with the sort of perpetual promise of like aspirationalism.

• 33:26Ryan Broderick?

  It is politically exactly like Trumpism. Yeah. It is this sort of like come into the big rally. It is all glitz and glamour and we're going to hypnotize you and we're going to promise you a better life over and over again and we're going to use motifs and themes that you recognize and we're going to sort of allow your brain to fill in the blanks of how those create a different future for you based on an imagined past. In the same way that when you're cranking it in your diaper and you're looking at a Miami Vice, you know, slot machine, like there is that connection to it. And we're going to talk more about that after the break, but first a word from our sponsors. They're got a great new app for gambling. It's called, I'm just kidding.

• 34:11Speaker 00

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• 34:38Speaker 04

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• 35:05Ryan Broderick?

  In the same way that I sort of feel like unregulated gambling within capitalism turns capitalism into just gambling, I also think that at a certain point of unregulated internet consumption, everything kind of just becomes porn.

• 35:21Ryan Broderick?

  So now these apps lure in younger people, trying to entice them in ways that I do think are not dissimilar to, maybe not sex workers, but definitely like porn platforms. Like Pornhub, to me, has the exact same mechanisms behind it as YouTube, behind TikTok. It is, it is trying to keep you in this aspirational, but never satisfying ecosystem of content, of urges, of desires. You know about Stake?

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Yes. Oh, God.

• 35:52Ryan Broderick?

  So I first noticed Stake because of their marketing campaign that literally made me gasp, where they have people watermarking memes. Have you seen these?

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:01Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. So talk us through Stake. How did you first discover Stake?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  So I was looking at crypto casinos, which are, there are these weird casinos that, you know, are not really allowed to operate in a lot of places, but they're island countries, where they are allowed to operate. And Stake caught my attention because it had a very interesting, this was before the meme strategy, they had a Twitch strategy where they would have influencers and streamers gamble house money for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours on end. And they would target streamers and influencers with audiences that were skewed pretty young, as does the demographic for the, for the app. You know, and not disclose, not disclose that they were giving these people house money to gamble with, not disclose that the streams were basically advertisements.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Resulted in some of it being reported out, but also some of these people just kind of like leaving the country, you know, with excuses, you know? So I learned of Stake because I was like, basically, they were using really ingratiated influencers and streamers, targeting children to bring them onto this gambling website where you could basically do online slot machines, you know, and slot machines are just some of the worst ways to gamble. And they were basically just doing digital slot machines all day for hours and hours and hours.

• 37:18Ryan Broderick?

  That's right. They were founded in 2017 by two guys who met playing RuneScape. So you know, you know, good dudes. Uh, the operating carousel, as you alluded to, they basically are only accessed in the US by VPN, which I think is fascinating. Uh, I'm glad that at least some, some goods coming out of this is that the average gambler is learning about the importance of a VPN.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. You know.

• 37:45Ryan Broderick?

  They have, they get Drake as a spokesperson?

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Drake's and Drake's, uh, the ads, I, you know, are ridiculous. Just him gambling all day or gambling in that club all alone.

• 37:56Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, the one where he's playing like Candy Crush in a club or whatever?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:59Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Just gambling on his phone on a big screen.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  I hate it.

• 38:03Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that's like the dark, that's, I think that's darker than being called a pedophile at the Super Bowl, actually.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. I think so, too.

• 38:10Ryan Broderick?

  I think it's way sadder.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, these were, where would these ads run?

• 38:17Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, yeah, after he got called a pedophile at the Super Bowl, he hooked his phone up to a, a, a giant screen at a nightclub and just like gambled for a while.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Empty nightclub also. Nobody's in there. There's like a couch in there for him.

• 38:27Ryan Broderick?

  A couch right in there, yeah. But what it, what starts to become really fascinating is how aggressively sort of like unethical they are about all this. So like in 2022, steak creates their own live streaming site, Kick, which is sort of like the, I think is now sort of just thought is, is like the far right version of Twitch. Like you go there if you get banned from Twitch. And they made 2.6 billion dollars in 2022. They also sponsor a Formula One team. And to bring us back to the top of the section, they have an insane strategy where they will just pay random users on X to post memes with a watermark on that meme that says steak, which I just, that to me is the, the, the, the final straw here.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:07Ryan Broderick?

  That's too much.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Get that shit out.

• 39:09Ryan Broderick?

  Get that shit out of there. But I think what's also really fascinating and to sort of loop back again to like the porn idea, which is that like, they are doing the same strategy as I think a lot of like sex workers on the internet, which is like they are using sort of this like tip of the iceberg idea to get you onto the site, to get you to pay money, to get you into the flow state. Uh, which is why my producer Grant really wanted me to ask you if you find any, uh, similarities between gooning and gambling.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  You know, you ask me, I mean, part of the thing with gooning, right, is supposed to be, it's not even about coming, it's about like, just doing it for hours and hours and hours.

• 39:50Ryan Broderick?

  Our listeners have begged us to stop talking about gooning and we took like a month more.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  It's like, people are like, double the gooning, or they're like, you need to stop, but it's really fifty fifty.

• 40:04Ryan Broderick?

  Honestly, that's the gooners dilemma, really.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Really, everything, everything isn't gambling, everything is gooning.

• 40:13Ryan Broderick?

  It is possible that in a, in a totally unregulated digital environment, everything is gooning or gambling or both.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  You know, like Magdalene Taylor's talked a bit about it and you had her on the pod also. You know, from reading that I've seen from her, from some other sex culture writers, it, there's a lot of overlap here with the gambling, I feel like.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, not pursuing, orgasm is not even the goal, it's like, kind of just like going into a flow state. There's a lot of like emphasis on or explicit talk about that flow state and about just like losing yourself for hours. Yeah, gooning and gambling themselves are not about, no longer about like coming and winning a jackpot. It's just about like betting, betting, betting and jerking, jerking, jerking and that, you know, cranking it for hours. And I also, and I wouldn't be surprised, I mean, I feel like there's also an increasing algorithmic, you know, mediation of both, right, you know, there, you know, the porn being dominated by,

• 41:14Speaker 02

  you know, close to a monopoly with MindGeek owning like a good chunk of the websites, distributors and studios. And using insights that they gain from people who visit, from, you know, similar to Casino, Casino doesn't need to hire a bunch of experts, behavioral economists, so on and so forth. They have such a massive data set of users that they just tweak things here and there and decide what they like and they decide based on tests what works best and then that, that is sufficient and that ends up being a more. More evidence-based thing than doing any other sort of controlled experiment. And similarly with porn, I do feel like as the algorithmic mediation increases and as this concentration of the market has increased, right?

• 41:58Speaker 02

  That you are seeing a similar sort of dynamic where you can just kind of experiment and push and try to see if you can drive consumer interest or what types of porn people might be interested in similar directions. Or experiment with influencers and people outside of the actual website itself, but on other platforms, doing this sort of tip of iceberg strategy, right?

• 42:21Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, and I think the usering in on the flow state is correct. Because I think in a lot of ways, the story of the internet of the last 15 years or so, are these companies becoming massive and trying very hard to figure out how to make the internet feel as gratifying as the physical world. And like, the computer can't touch you, it can't feed you, you can't smell it. Like, it doesn't do a lot of senses. But one thing that like, the computer, we figured out, can do is put you into a flow state. One that it can be quite addicting. And I don't think it's an accident that like, a lot of the oldest vices have found new homes online.

• 43:04Ryan Broderick?

  But you can sit in your house and you can just sort of just be sucked into your phone and not think about it for hours and hours and hours. I should also say, I enjoy going to Vegas. I don't want to be, I think that town is really weird and I enjoy, like, old Vegas is really weird. And I like, I like old downtown Vegas a lot. But I guess, this is where I, in a normal administration, I would ask you like, how do we fix this and make it better? But like, that seems completely stupid to even think about. But like, so I guess what I would tweak it to say is like, you know, where does this go next? Like, how do you sort of see the future of casino world?

• 43:36Speaker 02

  I talked a little bit in the piece about how we have a tendency in this country and in the world at large, I think, of just doing regrettable substitution, which is where you, you know, you take some incredibly toxic or hazardous product and you say, fuck, man, I'm so sorry. Well, first you deny that it does anything wrong and then you apologize and then you replace it with a near identical compound that is at no, is produced at no inconvenience to you. I think the path of smoking, of cigarettes is really instructive here, right? You go from smoking, you go to, you experiment with smokeless.

• 44:10Ryan Broderick?

  Yep.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Then you start to get into vapes and zins. And I think that similarly with, with gambling, I think there's so little interest, I think, already in handling things that are poisonous or toxic or, you know, noxious to the public, combined with the fact that when it comes to gambling, the lobby is so fucking good at figuring out how to co-opt almost any regulation, right? My concern, I talked a little bit about casino world, a hyper commodified capital, casino capitalism that Nate Silver talks about, where he kind of imagines that everything is gambling in the future and the only people who get ahead are those who like figure out

• 44:51Speaker 02

  how to mix both like savvy risk-taking with artificial intelligence to eke out advantages incrementally.

• 44:59Ryan Broderick?

  That must hit so hard if you're in an airport.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:02Ryan Broderick?

  That must just be like, fuck, yeah. AI in casinos? Hell yeah, dude.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. Nobody knows, you know, with your little fucking, you could have like a Google smart glass on, pretend your mission impossible. I think that is actually naive. I think it'll be probably worse and I don't think there's gonna be people using AI to get their little advantages. And I think that the casinos are gonna be offered as like a way to escape in an increasingly depressing world where we're gonna see much more violence and commitment to segregation, to rollback of property rights and voting rights and, you know, kind of the threadbare protections we've gotten over the past hundred years to loop it back to the New Deal, right? So much of this is, how do we get rid of that and then just shove everyone into a casino in one way?

• 45:48Ryan Broderick?

  So you, you sort of touched on this and I, this is, this is the part that I'm really worried about when it comes to specifically gambling online, which is that In America, we obviously have been very moralists from the beginning. We are, we are a country that is very strange about our vices. We allow like a vice zone, you can go do it in. But we are very much sort of like, if I see it, it's a problem. And I think one of the problem, one of the biggest issues with putting a lot of vice industry online. Uh, or let's say even like with the example you use, like sort of the switch from cigarettes to vaping. Like people don't really care if you vape unless you're like really milking those clouds.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:32Ryan Broderick?

  Like there's a, there's a real problem, I think in, in America with like unseen vice. Which I, so the idea that, you know, someone could be in their apartment right now, losing tens of thousands of dollars a week on, you know, uh, an app based in Curacao that they're using a VPN for. That person's not going to get the help or, or experience the regulatory sort of protections they need. Because no one can see it. Everyone complains about the fentanyl users on the corner, but they're not complaining about the person at home who's, you know, taking opioids or whatever.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  And then people will kind of laugh it off. I mean, you know, like take, you know, take a friend's vape and see how long, you know, that lasts. They'll probably go, you know, maybe you took a cigarette from someone, they'd be a little upset like, why the fuck did you take the cigarette? But would they kind of flip out the way that someone who's milking the vape 46 times a day would? Probably not.

• 47:26Ryan Broderick?

  Probably not.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  There's a reluctance to think through the moments where the unseen vices come to the head. When there's almost no real infrastructure, uh, in this country to help people with addiction. And when there is, it's far, far, far less than what's actually necessary.

• 47:47Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  And it doesn't really matter how smart you are as an individual with it, how savvy you are with it as an individual. At scale, which is, you know, where these companies are seeking to go, it's hurting immense amount of people and destroying a large number of people's lives.

• 48:02Ryan Broderick?

  And as it gets personalized, it gets weirder. And I think that actually hurts people from getting help because it's like, it's like, okay, like you might, for instance, be really into trading fart coin.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:13Ryan Broderick?

  But I might, for instance, be completely addicted to paying a virtual slot machine to give me like anime girls I can play with in my video game.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:22Ryan Broderick?

  And the mechanisms and the gambling mechanisms and the, we haven't even sort of talked about like the, the economics of, of the whale, the person who will spend a hundred dollars on your app a day. Those are the same things, but like, you know, I don't know if people are gonna wanna like, give, help me with my anime girl addiction the same way they wanna help you with your fart coin addiction. Like,

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:44Ryan Broderick?

  These things just splinter and fragment and so you don't get the same sort of social, social help, I think, because there's no word for it. There's no language for it.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  I think that's also part of the thing, right? That's why there's a big effort to not see a lot of these things as gambling.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Right. Hey, let me actually jump in here with my takeaway.

• 49:00Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, Grant. Yeah, go for it.

• 49:02Speaker 03

  Uh, what this made clear for me is that this creates a fork in the road and either direction leads to fascism. Play video games or slot machines, uh, to a place where you're zombied out and you're passive and uninvolved, that's good. Or become a hustle bro and convince yourself you can hack the matrix and then you're gonna end up in the manosphere cult or, you know, try to make a new one yourself. So either you become a fanboy of some toxic shit or you gain a habit that's going to take up your mind and, you know, resources. But either direction, it helps the right.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  The ascent of fascism has all these threats, right? It's not just driven by a bunch of white South Africans who didn't, can't get over the fall of apartheid.

• 49:51Ryan Broderick?

  Whoever could you be talking about? Good, good place to start.

• 49:58Speaker 03

  Might be, might, yeah, like, there's a long to do list, but that might be a good place to start.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  It's a great place to start.

• 50:04Ryan Broderick?

  Start there.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  But there's also, like you're saying, there's, there are a lot of other elements that are feeding into it and both connected and coming out of it, right? And I think of these sort of crises of like male identity formation. Like, think of it as like an oscillating wave that keeps coming in and out and in and out, where intersects on a lot of points along this line. And then, and I think similarly, you know, sometimes with gambling, it almost feels like when we try to talk about gambling and I think also what Ryan was talking about, when we're trying to talking about a lot of vices in America. It's the Protestant and the, and the like libertarian kind of come out and fight with each other and where it's like, well, you don't want to like, you know, restrict

• 50:50Speaker 02

  your ability to do literally anything, even though you live, we live in a country where increasingly you're not really able to do anything. But then also at the same time, like if the, if people are going to do the vices, they go out and do them over, you know, somewhere out of sight and maybe someone doing these might pine for a time where they could have done them elsewhere and that could maybe connect with or dovetail with this desire to rediscover, redefine their identity in older, more brutal, more purified, you know, forms that lend themselves to fascism, I guess.

• 51:24Ryan Broderick?

  You know what I compare it to? If you're someone who like enjoys like a drunk sick, you know, 1 a.m. you want a drunk sick. That's like poker to me. Now, that could be, you know, an avenue for, for a, a, a worse problem. But if you're just like hitting a drunk sick, like everyone, everyone wants to rip a fat dart like at one in the morning, that's totally fine.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 51:45Ryan Broderick?

  If you're sitting in your house all day long and you're just vaping non-stop, uh, that is bad. Uh, and that would, I think, be the, the difference that we're sort of like circling here. Um, I want to thank you for coming on the show. This was fantastic. This was, this was a very uplifting conversation about one of the darkest and saddest, uh, social diseases of our time.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. It was really great coming on to talk about how gambling is good and is cranking.

• 52:08Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it's all cranking at the end of the day. If people want to follow you online, where can they do that?

• 52:13Speaker 02

  I'm at BigBlackJack, I've been on Twitter, co-host of This Machine Kills, a podcast about tech. And I do the Tech Bubble newsletter on Substack, where I also write about tech.

• 52:24Ryan Broderick?

  Thank you very much. This was fantastic. Panic World is a Garbage Day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at garbage day dot email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our deranged logo was created by Gabby Cash. Please give us $5 at patreon.com/panicworld. Please give us products to sell by contacting multitude@multitude-production ads. For any other way you would like to give us money, or work with us, or promote us, or become financially entangled with us, you can reach out to our fixer, our wonderful bag man, Josh Vialstad, and you can reach him at [email protected].

• 53:07Ryan Broderick?

  And one piece of advice from me to you: chill out, touch grass while you still can.

• 53:26Speaker 03

  I think you both just convinced me that Portnoy is going to be president. I'm really certain about it.

• 53:31Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, there's like no question in my mind.

• 53:35Speaker 07

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