“It’s not an investment. It’s entertainment. For a very small amount of money you might change your life. For $2 you can spend the day dreaming about what you would do with half a billion dollars—half a billion dollars!”
You're not making a bet with negative expected value, you're purchasing an entertaining daydream to help you through your miserable day.
If someone established a reality TV version of something like The Millionaire [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_(TV_series)] then I bet people would start having that sort of daydream. Perhaps such a show would even lead to a decline in lottery ticket purchases, since the get-rich daydream would be available from another source.
In your scenario there would be a passive trigger that would dull the entertainment affect.
I wouldn't discount the little piece of paper with numbers on it.
So it could be signalling that you're not "puttin on airs" by acting superior to those around you who play. Or it could be signalling that you legitimately like to belong to the group around you who play. Or it could be simply signalling that you don't take yourself (or $2) that seriously.
edit: http://www.scribd.com/doc/14945786/Lottery-Demographics