I'm surprised that people seem to just now realize that sports betting is a bad idea. As you said, the worst aspect is the large amount of marketing and advertising these platforms receive; I wouldn't care if they weren't pushed so heavily.
Yes, there were illegal bookies before legalization, and they had all the problems of legalized gambling plus more. But the law-abiding (or at least casually law-breaking) majority of voters didn't think increasing the prevalence of sports gambling would hurt. Not too mention all the revenue promises (more benefits, cuts to other taxes). It's no surprise legalization was politically popular.
My mother in law loves it, she will go to the casino and come home up $1,000 or down $1,000 and it's all just entertainment to her. She loses probably a steady 5% on average, which is exactly what the casinos want.
Similar to many other toxic things, once the genie is out of the bottle and the government gets used to the revenue it generates, there is a large disincentive to tackling the problem.
Realistically, there's nothing particularly interesting about the Dallas Frackers versus the Washington Rentseekers. But if you have money on the outcome, watching a game (with a sufficient supply of alcohol) is actually bearable.
Edit: I'm explaining a real, actual reason for the value of sports betting for some people, but it seems that the Sportsball enthusiasts don't like desecration of their Holy Church. I apologize.
It's perfectly possible to find friends who aren't into "sportsball", but it takes more than paying an entry fee so you're allowed to hang.
I think what you need is to see a therapist and to rethink your position in life a bit, because it seems very misanthropic without being based on reality. I'd wager that most people don't care about sports all that much, at least anecdotally.
I strongly disagree with this.
A lot of us in the furry fandom have friends who are not furry. You would not believe the number of "normal" people who have seen pictures of my fursuit and thought it was cool. Everyone in my bible study thinks furry conventions look like fun but they would never attend a convention themselves.
And if your difference is not with identity or hobbies, significant number of our group are neurodivergent and/or LGBTQ+(whatever the acronym is today).
Despite what's happening currently, US culture has gotten less uptight about these things in the last three decades. With the internet people have a lot more exposure to things they wouldn't have seen before. And I believe, more accepting as a result.
Finding a friend can be difficult, but with the internet it is not impossible.
Seems more like you are seething.
Those who do learn from history learn that we never learn from history.
Edit - I just found a printed copy of the paper - I wrote it so long ago that the term 'sociopathic compulsive consumer' was being used. At the time, I found a lot of evidence of casinos using terms like 'instant gratification' in their marketing commmunications. This is over two decades ago. Heck, the actual paper is on a 3.5 inch floppy.
Took me from a generally laissez-faire attitude about gambling, to being entirely on board with simply outlawing at least that sector of it. So very nasty.
(Incidentally, this did answer a question for me: “how did esports get so big so fast, financially?”. Never made much sense to me. The money’s in gambling, and it’s a fucking lot of money. Lightbulb went on and I felt dumb for not realizing it sooner)
Despite that, my class had a serious problem with legalized gambling. One of the most free market absolutists I have ever met even concluded that gambling should just be outlawed. He was (and I believe still is) completely in favour of all drugs being legalized, but legalized gambling bothered him in a way that legalized crack cocaine never could have. What pushed him over was how they fund legalization campaigns with all these promises for help for addicts - they'll usually even offer to put a portion of total book into rehabilitation. And then as soon as it is legalized, they will specifically target people who could become addicted.
It's a good grift unfortunately, an insane amount of money is involved in it as is usually the case with these sorts of morally bankrupt endeavors.
> worst aspect is the large amount of marketing and advertising these platforms receive
Virtually no one is advertising prostitution or human trafficking — certainly not to the degree that gambling is being advertised.
By extension, it seems we can agree prostitution and human trafficking are not nearly as severe a problem as gambling.