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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3024 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 10, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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https://www.thecut.com/article/gambling-addiction-casino-world.html

I saw this article this morning, with the online headline "My $5,000 Bender in Casino World"

And my reaction was... Befuddled. $5k? That's it? I'd be modestly interested in hearing a friend tell me about losing $5k gambling. But as the subject of a whole article? Come on. With inflation the way it is, I think you have to lose at least $30,000 before it's interesting. Listing $5k might hurt a lot of people, but the real problem was their prior destitution/poor decision making, not the $5k lost gambling. Just, like, get a job?

I had a similar reaction to would-be academic Kierkegaard's changing his name and moving country to dodge a $10k judgment. Come on, what formidable person can't just pay that off? Tighten your belt for six months and you should be fine.

Maybe it's just seeing the world through privilege, but I feel weird being asked to respect these people. It's an ethos argument: if you don't have your life organized such that you can handle a minor financial setback, you're not a substantial person.

What do you think is, in 2023 first world countries, a large enough financial loss to be interesting, or to force a life change on someone, for a person you would respect?

To put my cards on the table up front, you wouldn't respect me. But that's ok, I stopped caring much about respect when I learned I was a genetic dead end. Which is another reason I don't deserve respect.

Never mind all that, I just read the clarification you wrote to iprayiam and I had misunderstood in the same way.

Nevertheless, I don't think the writer was aiming for respect - she's talking about licking crumbs of coke off the floor of a restroom and mocking her own stupidity constantly. Even the last few paragraphs, when she's trying to get better, are written in a way that makes her look silly. It reads more like a confessional or cautionary tale to me.

Sure, but I want my confessional and cautionary tales bigger and juicier. I didn't read the article until after I posted this, because my original point was just about the headline failing to grab me. Having now read it, it's the same thing: the problems strike me as banal, and the writer isn't strong enough to carry it off.

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