In today’s post, I’ve explored what I think about the idea that the world is being consumed by Casino logic and how that connects into an older idea that I’ve been kicking around which is that America is a Death Cult.
As usual, the ideas and thoughts here are provisional and exploratory.
I may encounter some new information or thought that radically changes how I think about these ideas.
But, I won’t know that if I don’t write it down to look at.
Summary
Recapping the Casino-world ideas from Panic World podcast with Edward Ongweso Jr (The Tech Bubble post), from June 2025. It was the legalization of online sports betting in the US that really turned a lot more of internet economy toward the idea of keeping the users in flow state. Not just attention economy feeds, but everything. The user is so focused on the trickle of entertainment that they don’t notice the draining bank account or frittered hours. Turning toward this had already started before betting got involved, maxing attention metrics just became a mainstream imperative.
I hypothesize that the ad sellers in the feeds are not actually incentivized to do excellent matching of highly relevant ads. If they do, the user exits the doom scroll loop. It’s just enshittification: value is extracted by the middleman from both parties. The user is duped into doom scrolling, the ad buyer is swindled out of click throughs in this two-sided scam.
The feed user trades away their time and attention in exchange for the analgesic thumb-twitching hours of a distracted half-sleep. They escape to TikTok from whatever it is that is immediately troubling them. It’s not necessarily anxiety free, but it is legal, self-dosed through their own dopamine glands, is convincingly in their own control, and is always available. Whenever they need a moment of distraction from their daily suffering, whatever it may be, an internet break is always in there in the pocket.
An emergent feature of America’s particular flavor of divided bureaucracy1 governance is profit maximizing in highly regulated environments. That’s the great thing about being able to help write the rules, it’s hard to be a criminal when you don’t break any laws. And, making the individual responsible for all the risk and consequences gives them a feeling of control. I call this situation the American Death Cult. The people are setup to fail, and they want it.
The death cult is the bigger tent here. Casino-world is just one particular ring of marketing mechanics inside the circus. There are other rings, and the most successful blend distraction and confusion to keep the participants disempowered and unable to align the incentives with their own interests.
Resonant Phrases
“casino-ification of the internet”, and everything
“placing bets is an entry gate to flow state”
“getting to the content interrupts the flow”
“dupe the ad buyer as much as the scrolling user”
“exchange attention time for a docile vegetative state of half sleep.”
“a kind of legal self-drugging”
“people blinders”
“the death cult is the bigger tent”
“How to avoid being a criminal: don’t break the law. Easiest to do that if you also wrote the laws.”
Gather specific examples of the death cult systems that show profit-harm misalignment. Some immediate examples are healthcare, housing, student debt, fintech, social media. Write case studies.
Dig deeper into flow state around doomscrolling and gambling. How does it start, how is it interrupted, where else does it surface? Cable news, shopping, anything that tries to get you hooked.
Get a few more examples of regulatory capture.
How to counter the flow exploitation?
How to resolve if the ad buyers are in fact being duped in the current system? It’s just speculation in my thinking.
Ref: 25.2p71-73
Graeber’s revolving door relationship of the regulator to the regulated. See his book The Utopia of Rules. ↑