Gambling has spread its tentacles across society, encompassing betting on everything from the next play in a football game to the exact release date of a video game and on to a presidential election. Such a high-risk endeavor is a fun escape for many Americans. But these opportunities to wager are leading to increases in bankruptcies and domestic violence even as they are creating new business models and piling winnings into the hands of a few gamblers. The growth of a gambling society gained momentum with what we call the “Competitive Life,” a lifestyle that includes a lot of time spent watching and participating in sporting events. The traits of this life of competition, when joined with an ongoing worldview that saw gaming the system – indeed, the gaming of everything, from romance to job searches – as intriguing (and, again, fun), eventually led to a Gambling Mindset.
Three phenomena stand behind the recent interest in both the Competitive Life and the Gambling Mindset: Gamification; Hustle Culture and the Era of Limits; and the Smartphone. Together, they normalized a gaming perspective on seemingly everything in life and nurtured what became the spread of a nefarious turn: “gaming the system.” At that point, gambling opportunities – legal and illegal – became ubiquitous. The resulting reality is firmly embedded in American culture and will likely not change anytime soon.