Watch this manic, lightly dystopian advertisement promoting legal gambling in Florida

but gambling is a traditional family value. it says so right in the bible! /s

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Book of Job. Even God can’t pass up some action when Satan proposes a wager.

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and in those myths, we, the beings supposedly “created and beloved by gawd” are the losers of that uber meta wagering.
fuck that mythological bullshit, i’ll cast my lots with the Seminoles and take my own chances.
thank y’all very much.

and, despite the /s @gatto offered, i was always under the impression that the performatively pearl clutching christofascists were deadset against gambling as an ultimate sin. but wait. if they can make a buck and decry the sin of gambling, well… more’s the better. the hypocrisy knows no bounds.

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Meh… I’m not necessarily a fan on banning gambling, but at the same time, I’m not sure it really counts as an expansion of “freedom”? It seems to me a new tactic by republicans who support sports betting laws to get the libertarian vote, while doubling down on all their other vile shit… :woman_shrugging: YMMV. I know some enjoy it, and that Native Americans have had success running gambling businesses (though I wonder how much it does trickle down to the rest of the community?), and that’s fine, but it’s also been shown to be highly addictive, and I can imagine that’ll be double true with the model you described above, with having everything fed through an app.

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We’ve had legal online betting in New Jersey for awhile now, including sports betting. The ads are so predatory, just like the companies behind it. I’m not anti-gambling, either. I love to hit the casino and play Texas Hold Em. I don’t do it a lot, but I always have fun, even when I don’t win. But these apps and ads aren’t aimed at me. They’re aimed at the same people who sit in the convenience store for an hour on payday buying scratchoff after scratchoff, convinced that the next ticket is going to make them rich. We don’t need to be making it easier for addicts to destroy their lives.

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Community GIF

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This is the same company that’s trying to bring a casino to Kenosha, Wisconsin. Here they’re partnering with Menominee tribe. I can’t help but wonder how they’re screwing over these tribes.

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Point Damon GIF by Pose FX

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yeah, with regular gambling you expect everyone is getting the same odds.

but apps allow developers to tailor things per user. for example, like what’s done to uber and lyft drivers: give good rates to people who don’t use the app much, then as you use it more ( hey, i’m making money! i’ll quit my other job ) slowly ratchet down the rates. ( why can’t i pay my rent now?! )

it’s really evil, and without strong regulation ( which it won’t have ) it’s going to snare people. microtransactions and loot boxes in apps already hurt people; it’s going to be like that i think, only with much much larger sums of money.

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But much shareholder value will be created. /s

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In the case of the “Hard Rock” businesses the Seminole Tribe of Florida owns the operation. Bought it out in late 2006 for slightly under a billion dollars.

I have absolutely no reason to expect that the relationship between the leadership and the membership of the tribe isn’t one big, sordid, principal-agent problem; but if there’s dodgy allocation of money going on it’s an inside job; not just an independent company using whatever tribe is cheapest to coopt as legal cover.

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  1. WTF is Hard Rock Bets?? They took the Hard Rock Cafe brand and made it a betting app? Or do they also have casinos now? (Googling) I guess they have lots of hotels and casinos now. When did they just stop being restaurants?

  2. I HATE all the sports betting ads on TV now. Fucking hell. We really need to ban that and drug advertising. Fucking ridiculous.

  3. I don’t think it should be illegal. Betting through these apps and sites is safer than underground betting. But it is still going to fuck up the lives of people with poor impulse control, and/or people with addictive personalities.

Too many tribes (and I am especially including my Citizen Potawatomi Nation) measure their success in how much money the various enterprises bring in, and secondary the various programs it supports. Which, it is good for those programs to be there.

They don’t measure it in how many members can speak the language, know the traditions, create the art, or cook the food of our ancestors. It is hard to fully blame tribal leadership, as traditions were beaten out of them and we now live in the world created by colonization where success is measured differently. But so many people would like to see that money channeled in to funding heritage and culture outreach.

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They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots. -John 19:24

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Ah, there’s how “Hard Rock” is screwing over the tribe. Unfortunately so is the leadership that’s selling out their own people. I don’t know the conditions of the Seminole tribe specifically, but I do know the living conditions on a lot of tribal lands are pretty rough. I suspect a billion would do a lot to improve that for any given tribe.

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that doesn’t say it’s recommended. heck, the bible describes eating the apple of knowledge and that’s also a no no.

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They betting companies use advanced computer modeling to make sure that the wins and losses at least balance out. There’s a small percentage of bettors that make a profit but the overwhelming majority of bettors lose money. The real deal is that the house takes a small percentage from each and every bet (the “vig”). With the volume of wagers being so large, that percentage is an incredibly large amount of money. Billions. Many of them.

It’s “entertainment”, except when it isn’t. The amount and style of advertising is kind of staggering and there’s no doubt that it’s enticing for some people. But so is the amount of advertising for alcohol and there’s no call for that to be banned.

Prohibition doesn’t work.

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You know, when I was looking that verse up I stumbled across an editorial about a pastor who actually said that this passage and the apostles choosing a replacement for Judas meant that god was ok with gambling. I am 99% certain that was said within the context of a “game day” sermon. The Bible is the original second amendment; it can mean absolutely anything except what it says in plain language.

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so far as i understand, there’s a long tradition within christianity of being against gambling.

and that particular quote ( either: deciding who gets to pick which bits of clothing first by drawing lots; or, randomly assigning pieces of clothing based on lots ) is pretty far from gambling on sports using money…

but yeah, what the bible says and what tradition is can often be two entirely different things. and arguably with the arrival of buddy jesus and the prosperity gospel, white evangelism has thrown out all the traditions, so pretty much anything goes as long as you’re rich or want to be rich.

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Ah, there’s how “Hard Rock” is screwing over the tribe. Unfortunately so is the leadership that’s selling out their own people.

Looks like leadership benefits greatly (impossible to tell how much per the linked article below), but so do tribe members (to the tune of $10,500/month). Source: https://www.floridabulldog.org/2023/01/seminole-tribe-leaders-look-expel-trio-for-going-media-about-corruption/?rmail=1

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Okay, that’s good – that’s how it should be done. Glad to know it’s working like that in at least some cases!

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