Is the US a dystopia?

Especially when you're drunk on free (bad) booze.

I've only had two casino experiences, one in Atlantic City and one in Reno. I thought both were equal parts fascinating, entertaining, and depressing.

I've been to one in Indiana and one outside Seattle. The latter was fine, played cheap slots for an hour and actually won enough to pay for a decent dinner. Indiana was for a bachelor party and was one of the most depressing experiences I can remember.

I've been to Vegas a couple of times for work-related events. The Strip is just horrible, it's drunk Disneyworld. It's almost impossible to escape being battered by very loud music and bright lights. And maybe it's just me, but I easily get lost in the casinos, and I don't drink.

In 51 years I have been into a casino maybe four times, and left each one without making a transaction of any kind. Just held zero appeal to me. I don't know whether it's because I'm smart or dumb or simply immune to their appeal.

NB, I do not wish to sound boastful; I do lots of stupid things. That just doesn't happen to be one of them.

Casinos are fun but they have to be a special occasion once-every-five-years thing or it’s just depressing. Like going to a strip club for a bachelor party vs. knowing which one has the best dinner buffet.

Never been to a casino; never been to a strip club. Hoping to go my whole life with those streaks unbroken.

My limited strip club experiences — 2 for bachelor parties and 2 for journalistic purposes — also broke down into the fascinating/entertaining/depressing mixed reactions. I found them simultaneously more normal and weirder than I expected, in the sense that the banality of them itself seemed strange. But that's probably a whole different thread.

Strip clubs probably less dystopian than the U.S. in general.

Well here’s where I become everyone’s least favorite moralist again, but I think all gambling is reprehensible and it should be banned.

that totally worked with alcohol iirc

I don’t really give a shit about arguments for it, tbh.

i don't think sleeve was advocating for it, but was just pointing out that banning it would likely channel it into the creation of an even more corrupt state than we currently enjoy. that's hard to imagine, I know, but historically speaking it has happened many, many times.

Hitting a strip club as a gay man sucks! I got the "Ohhh, you're gay, how cuuuute!" and suddenly I was out $20 because they massaged my shoulders and arms.

I found them simultaneously more normal and weirder than I expected, in the sense that the banality of them itself seemed strange. But that's probably a whole different thread.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, 21 November 2022 20:11 (two hours ago) link

Not strange. It’s someone’s place of work. And honestly the craving for human contact is quite banal. This is what strippers understand.

The industry as a whole is dystopian because strippers encounter men who are disgusting and enjoy degrading them. But this is a problem with men not stripping.

I don’t understand the appeal of gambling though.

lots of problems with men not stripping tbh

Yeah, it's like me and speeding. To see these dudes race down highways going 90 in trucks the size of AT-ATs is to wish for spontaneous combustion.

Not strange. It’s someone’s place of work.

Oh yeah, it's just when it's not something you experience a lot it's odd at first to be somewhere where people are taking off their clothes in public.

Oh yeah, it's just when it's not something you experience a lot it's odd at first to be somewhere where people are taking off their clothes in public.

As I said, I've never been to a strip club, but I was the editor of a porn magazine for five years in the early 2000s and sometimes porn actresses would come to the office, and the alacrity with which they would drop all their clothes and just walk around like that was astonishing to me.

taking yr clothes off is fun

especially while holding a Negroni

I wonder if naked people ever run around furry conventions claiming to be Sphynx cats

Oakland has a ban on strip clubs (of any kind), which is something I've never fully understood. There's a depressing card room on San Pablo Avenue, which I visit due to the hoffbrau. But I think that's technically Emeryville.

The Hustler Club in San Francisco has a buffet lunch that's supposed to be not half-bad

Eating at a strip club seems kinda weird to me, but I guess it's for businessmen here for conventions? I dunno

Legs & Eggs baby

Strips clubs with all-you-can-eat buffet shrimp guarantee that the U.S. is emphatically NOT a dystopia

Are strip clubs in sex positive countries like sweden and finland still depressing? And if they’re not depressing, are they still erotic? And how is the shrimp?

Well here’s where I become everyone’s least favorite moralist again, but I think all gambling is reprehensible and it should be banned.

― poppin' debussy (the table is the table), Monday, November 21, 2022 9:13 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

that totally worked with alcohol iirc

― sleeve, Monday, November 21, 2022 9:18 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

It would be great if we didn't live in a dystopia where despair and anhedonia and isolation didn't drive people toward self-destructive behaviors so we didn't have to legislate against them bc they just weren't very popular, maybe let's have that as the vision we structure things around?

Agreed

It would be great if we didn't live in a dystopia where despair and anhedonia and isolation didn't drive people toward self-destructive behaviors so we didn't have to legislate against them bc they just weren't very popular, maybe let's have that as the vision we structure things around?

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Tuesday, November 22, 2022 1:13 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

did this article ever get linked itt? i think about it a lot. i think there's something to it, that there's a general "baked in" reason for why we seem to love self-destructive behavior so much. ultimately i think we could really stand to balance things out in the direction that you're gesturing towards. i know that i could use a lot more love. but i also think that letting the death drive speak / having a place for it is wise and maybe even good for us. very vague i have to admit.

https://late-light.com/issues/issue-1/death-drive-nation

just have to say though that you speak the truth, and i always appreciate it when you contribute to these kinds of discussions here, which are usually male dominated.

otm

(in orbit, and map)

otmx2

i don't think despair and anhedonia and are always at the wheel, but it's pretty to think so.

also i am strongly in favor of a mission to eliminate those as controlling/dominating factors

I mean of course I’m for eliminating the conditions, and suggesting that I’m not is ludicrous.

But as someone who was not raised a gambler, doesn’t gamble, and has never understood the appeal of it— this despite many other problems with addiction— I think it’s easy for me to say “ban it,” because it literally has nothing to do with any part of anything in my life. My position isn’t nuanced or studied, I’ve just always found the idea of gambling distasteful or an obvious scam.

in orbit speaks wisdom

but sometimes (just a slight counterpoint) self-destructive behaviors can also be kinda exhilarating, like "look what I can do and still survive"

Well and also the things that can become self-destructive behaviors tend to start out as simple pleasure seeking. Gambling (if you enjoy it) is a little exciting, you get a buzz from it. Same with drugs, getting high is fun. And in both cases lots of people can indulge in a little thrill-seeking without doing much damage to themselves or their lives. It's when you overlay those short-term thrills on top of existing despair/anhedonia/trauma/etc that the thrill-seeking becomes destructive, a way to escape pain rather than sprinkle some dopamine on a more solid psychological foundation. I wouldn't call any of those impulses inherently self-destructive, they're situationally self-destructive. Which makes regulating them tricky, because it's so easy to say "Well, most people can handle it," without sufficiently accounting for the damage they can do.

Desmond Morris has a book adding a whole ev-bio cast to this discussion, which is probably discredited now and probably not helpful. Roughly, Tom Sawyer does stupid shit to get Becky Thatcher's attention.

Especially when you're drunk on free (bad) booze.

I've only had two casino experiences, one in Atlantic City and one in Reno. I thought both were equal parts fascinating, entertaining, and depressing.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, November 21, 2022 1:33 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This pretty nicely describes my one casino experience, in Ocean Pines, Maryland in 2014.

It was almost comical how manipulative the whole thing was. It’s easy to see how people get played.

I went in with $10, which was to be the extent of my money to wager on slot machines. Stuck to that, and ultimately left with the same about of money.

“About the same amount of money” - maybe it was low $9.57 or so.

My grammar is awful this week.

The best account I've read of professional gambling was an interview with a guy who was a longtime casino grinder. He had a simple system, he started out every day with $1,500. He knew the games he was best at or had the best odds, and he would play those until he either lost all his money or doubled it. Sometimes took all day, sometimes he'd be done in a half-hour, but either way he would walk away. At the time — I think this was like 20 years ago I read this — he said he grossed about $75k a year. Which seemed OK if you just really liked hanging around casino but struck me as not a lot of fun.

Anyway, to connect all this back to the thread title, I think one definition or at least symptom of a dystopian society is that it uses these short-term thrills — gambling, drugs, bread, circuses — in the way addicts do, to distract from or paper over abysses of need and hurt, rather than dealing with the underlying damages.

Absolutely and in orbit was otm earlier about motivations towards these behaviors on the individual level.

But the story milo first posted was about how even (some) public universities have become like private equity firms, treating the people they are supposed to be educating and caring for as a constantly replenishing population of marks, as a resource to be mined. And yeah student loans and other terrible things mean that isn't nec new—universities are on a long and steady neoliberal decline—but the gangster mentality of pushing gambling on students because the already disgustingly over-funded athletic program gets a cut is still a little shocking to me.

Y'all I literally smoke cigarettes, I understand death drives and exhilaration and have quite a lot of contempt for myself as evidenced by my poor life choices over the years. I'm just saying, on the whole, if we took care of people more they would kill themselves less, including by gambling away their futures for a thrill or possibly as the only prospect of escaping financial ruin by winning a fantasy amount of money. tipsy otm above.

Gambling indeed comes with a major endorphin rush when you win, and yet it's hard to walk away when you lose. That stupid cliche on TV/movies where someone just makes another bet to try to make back their first is pretty real - your confidence in winning the next bet shoots up after a loss, the need to "not lose" supercedes preservation. And it's how I lost thousands once.

I struggle with it - I broke down crying once after losing money I shouldn't have been betting , and angrily destroyed a laptop another time after another loss.

When you have a lot of disposable income, if you're not full-on addicted, you may be able to self-regulate enough to win a little money and not dent your savings. But the moment your situation changes financially (as mine did due to my changing life situation two years ago), all these habits are still ingrained in you, and your brain isn't necessarily going to let you pull back. Hence why I did some stupid shit last year that I'm still upset about.

I've dealt with it by now only allowing myself longshot bets (i.e. parlays, guessing scores) where you bet $20 and win $1000. Haven't hit yet but also have stopped big wagers.

The other thing = winning a small bet is an easy gateway to thinking "why don't I add another zero into the next one? I could solve my debt with one bet" type fantasy leaps