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Comment by dfxm12 | Hacker News Reader

Younger men are into gambling for a lot of reasons. It's just too easy to gamble when you can do it on your phone (especially when you're already on your phone). They don't think hard work will get them ahead in life (they are probably correct, given housing prices, etc.). They are bombarded with ads (during the games you can bet on!), influencers, etc. Gambling apps are gamified and give you a lot of incentives to keep coming back. Gambling is addictive enough...

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It started as a joke, we used to laugh at the groups of guys who would gamble their food money doing "feast or famine"they knew it was dumb and so did we. Then the joke slowly moved over to my group of friends doing so and we knew it was dumb and treated it so. Fast forward 6 years and its so entrenched in daily life every single guy I know at least casually gambles weekly on their favorite sports and some do multiple bets per day on games they dont even watch. I bet $20-$50 on MMA which is like 5% of my income each week thats considered low.

Young man I’m going to give you a piece of life advice. You don’t throw your money away on something frivolous like that. You buy a long term, safe investment, like FartCoin.

I don't know if you're joking but FartCoin hasn't shown returns all year.

You don’t buy FartCoin for the short term gains, you buy it for the long term. For example it’s down over the past hour, but if you look long term (past day) it’s up.

And yes of course I’m joking. If you’re spending money on these get rich quick schemes instead of dollar cost averaging into an index fund, you’re being irresponsible. That’s real advice.

Mine was a joke too, sorry. I was just trying to go along with your bit.

Ah sorry. Irony is dead these days.

Please do the math on what $50/week could mean to you in 10 or 20 years and compare that to the likelihood you have any kind of edge betting.

$50/week at 10% compounding monthly for 10 years works out to ~$41k

Maybe that means a lot in 10 years, but... is it that impactful now? More impactful than gambling surely, and perhaps this is a bit myopic, but I feel like you wouldn't even be able to buy any new car with that amount 10 years from now. Hopefully it'll still count as an emergency fund.

We saw the value of money halve over like 4 years while everyone who had money made bank. It's tough to be hopeful that any amount saved is going to go far in the future tbh. $41k is about 1/10th of a down payment on a half-duplex, assuming you're keen to borrow the remaining $1.1m.

Definitely don't gamble though, that message I can get behind.

The median home price in the US right now is ~$400k[0], so that's a 10% down payment. While 20% is the traditional target, you can get loans with 3% down, so it seems pretty substantial to me. If you saved that $50/week starting at 18, you could be a decently confident home-buyer in your 20s. If you and a spouse each did that, there's your 20% target.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

Certainly a fair argument, and in re-reading my comment I realize I forgot to qualify it with "in my city" the prices are unbelievably out of reach, but it was mainly meant to illustrate the point rather than be factually complete.

I don't think ~$400k accurately depicts useful information, but I'd rather be hopeful than cynical, so I think if your only goal is homeownership, then hopefully if one does trade something stupid like gambling for investments, there will still be options somewhere

I think that $50 a week is expensive hobby, but affordable.

The real threat is that it wont stop there. Some will go to $100 a week, $500 a week and so on, because that is how addiction works.

For all the rationalizations, they do it for the feeling it gets them. And those feelings will drive higher stakes even after you have gambling debt.

I agree. I find men in the 18-30 range being a prime target for targeted gambling ads.

In Australia, it is also not just in app/browser ads either. Gambling promotion is very normalised and entrenched.

The major sports on news and sports shows have the odds showing who is likely to win. Some sports analysis shows (especially on pay TV) even go as far as providing overs/unders for line betting or "possibly wins" from multi-bets (bet $100 and you can win $123,000 with this combination).

Around the sports grounds - all covered in ads. The scoreboards have odds. The team and competition mobile apps all have odds. Even commentary on the radio has ads inserted regularly during a call: "Player A runs up and kicks a goal, and they are now level with 10 points on the Elon-Musk SpaceX Scoreboard. An amazing goal, it's a candidate for the Anthropic goal of the week." During quarter/half breaks, they give more options to bet on. Due to this, I prefer mostly to listen to commentary on public broadcasters as they are not allowed to contain ads at all. I find commercial radio trying to insert brand names every second sentence rather than providing expert analysis.

Similar to loot boxes for teens. It's building up habits for future gambling addictions. Mostly FPS games - that are prominently targeted at teenage boys.

Remember that a lot of men in the 18-30 range have been using lootbox mechanics in games since their teens. Or at least similar game mechanics where you are rewarded for taking a risk or loyalty with a random reward (loot tables, daily login rewards etc.).

I think a lot of gambling related material is targeted at the ages below legal gambling age with the specific purpose to get people to start gambling from legal age, however that would be hidden of course. Similarly no one becomes an alcoholic or smoking addict overnight the day they become of legal age for that substance, there is a buildup period.

Gambling addiction is way more damaging the younger you get in touch with it.

Gambling and scalping (and the combo that comes from reselling things like pokemon cards and other blind box products). They really do seem like the only options for a lot of people to live the kind of life that they've been sold as the ideal.

And as much as I hate that this is what is happening, I feel like that's what I'm going to end up being forced to try after 15+ years in working software development jobs, given how badly the companies want to replace us with LLMs. Hasn't gotten to that point yet but I'm shocked every day we're not laid off.

You say "a lot of people" but there aren't many of those. The scalpers/pokemon resellers/... making bank and posting on Instagram are, if not outright fraud, at best the 1% to 0.1% of those trying to do it

They are not options to get that lifestyle. Any rational evaluation shows that.

It is about how those men want to feel.

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