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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30411 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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How Colleges and Sports-Betting Companies ‘Caesarized’ Campus Life

The online gambling deals have helped athletic departments recoup some of the revenue they lost during the pandemic. The partnerships bring in extra funds that schools can use to sign marquee coaches and build winning sports teams. Mr. Haller, Michigan State’s athletic director, said in a news release at the time of the Caesars deal that it would provide “significant resources to support the growing needs of each of our varsity programs.”

The partnerships raise questions, however, about whether promoting gambling on campus — especially to people who are at an age when they are vulnerable to developing gambling disorders — fits the mission of higher education.

Some aspects of the deals also appear to violate the gambling industry’s own rules against marketing to underage people. The “Responsible Marketing Code” published by the American Gaming Association, the umbrella group for the industry, says sports betting should not be advertised on college campuses.

promoting gambling to 18 year olds is the latest way in which college sports are distorting the goal of college. at uc boulder, the school gets $30 every time someone downloads an app and makes a bet. the faculty managed to ensure that this money went to the right causes, though:

“We came up with the idea that the money from the referral bonus could actually go toward diversity and inclusion and equity efforts at the university, in particular because a lot of the money in athletics are made from underrepresented minorities,” Mr. Hornstein said. A spokesman for the university’s chancellor, Philip DiStefano, confirmed that some of the money will be used to expand mental health and diversity initiatives.

Think the problem is that 'social barriers' are now permeable enough that one can't accept something without, in effect, tacitly approving that it become ubiquitous.

You can pretty much ONLY have either a blanket ban, heavily enforced, or ads everywhere and run into it constantly on the streets.

I'm overstating it, but yeah, once something crosses the barrier into social 'acceptability' it tends to jump to straight-up social approval. I contemplate this a lot.

It can go the other way, see tobacco cigarettes.

I don’t know that that’s actually true. Strip clubs, for example, are not particularly socially approved despite being common enough and not ultrastigmatized.

Give it another twenty years. Stripping is already portrayed as female empowerment in the media, falling under the umbrella of sex work, which is gradually shifting into mainstream acceptability.

Are you confusing stripping with pole dancing? I'd like to see evidence that it's the former and not just the latter, which has caught on as its own hobby/psuedo-sport that is largely divorced from the sex-work context.

I don't have much to add here except to say that this has been a very shocking/amusing development. I use instagram, and the amount of my female friends who just casually post pole dancing videos in revealing underwear is completely weirding me out. I'm not complaining of course, I'm simply bewildered. Just a few years ago I would find it unthinkable.

And the 9s/10s that get into modeling also appear to have this culture of getting naked at every opportunity. Not with a pornographic intent, it's always 'artistic' to some extent.

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