I absolutely HATE sports betting it is a plague and should be banned

A long time ago

I never thought much or ever about sports betting or any betting growing up. I remember the Houston Post / Chronicle would post "the line" near the back of the sports section and vaguely having an idea as to what the favorite and point spread was, but mostly I just looked at it to see who "They" - the unknown ubiquitous they - thought were gonna win. Also, the baseball odds were totally weird. It wasn't till high school when our PE coach explained them till I figured that out.

When I was younger and starting to have opinions about things, of course like any young dope I was all in on lotteries and gambling being legal. I remember forming proto opinions about evil Southern Baptist prohibitionists during the time when Texas was legalizing the lottery and pari mutuel betting via referenda, I believe. And yes it's ****in weird that I recall various state referenda as a teen - but live and let live said teenage me. Where is your anti dicing god now!

I do remember mild enthusiasm for scratch off tickets when they arrived in our pre internet lives. I also remember being really bored and watching the broadcast from Gulf Grayhound Park on UHF (channel 39 or something?) Gordon Lake? on the call "around the back they come and here's your field....") - but otherwise the gambling itself held no appeal because Lotto and dog racing were freaking boring even back then where we had fewer distractions.

Anyway that's pretty much my whole exposure to gambling as a kid. Had literally nothing to do with sports or sports watching or whatever.

Present Day

Holy ****in ****, if I some other dumbass celebrity like Jamie Foxx yelling at me about bet mgm or hear some radio chud talking about almost hitting his parleys or hammering the over or if I look up.a sports score and can't ****in see it because the UX folks at ESPN decided to drop " bet ESPN " buttons onto every ****in table in the mobile view, im just going to lose it even more than I have already lost it

This stuff is so goddam boring and not at all related to the things we ostensibly care about - the sporty sports ness. And it's not a case of the non sports world extruding into the sports world, as all the anti woke patrolmen would have it - that's an unavoidable consequence of existing in the world.

rather , this is entirely avoidable - the minutuae of the sports world - like prop bets on Johntay Porter - being tranched, securitized and monetized in order to make some soulless very rich husk-people very richer. This is not a thing that needs to exist, or at least, needs to exist at scale.

It's one thing to have some fantasy sports league. Fine , that was fun back in the day with my college dorm bros It's another thing when I go to the games and see roes of dead eyed young dudes glued to their phones to hit the 4th quarter under. ****in awful.

The scope and scale of mobile sports gambling is so much more destructive than the old apocryphal days of vito breaking your kneecaps - the ease with which it can be accessed, the normalization of awful boring sports gambling content being superimposed across our retinas at every possible opportunity, the fact that ****in kids are being taught this **** is normal "please bet responsibly and call 1800 go fk yourself if you don't after we take all your $" .

It's a sickness and a scandal that we just let this **** happen.

The Baptists were right.

This **** is the plague.

 

The "bet responsibly" disclaimers are the ultimate symbol of American hucksterism - let's tack on some magic words as part of the legislative package that allows us to put a vacuum cleaner into people's pockets - no refunds, all sales final