Betting on Life

If you watch YouTube or are on TikTok, some Kalshi and Draft Kings ads try to sell you on gambling. Which currently is a huge phenomenon after becoming legal online in 2022 after California voted for Proposition 27 which legalized sports betting and revenue for a homelessness prevention fund initiative.

As well as our current economy forcing you to have multiple forms of income just to keep you head above the water. Now “they” get you addicted to a potential come up in a few hundred dollars. Which truthfully would be really useful in my life but I unfortunately do not have the funds to even place a bet. Maybe that's a good thing LOL.

Betting started with sports then when Love Island was hot, gambling on the predicted winner took over the marketing strategy to hit a different demographic who consumes reality television.

However, while sitting down to eat my lunch recently, I popped on a Cody Ko video and the Kalshi ad that played for me advertised betting on weather predictions and the midterm elections.

It felt dystopian.

Like some weird reason to blame late stage capitalism or something.

Also celebrities are the main ones promoting Kalshi and us Americans have a strange willingness to believe whatever Hollywood has to say. Shoving it deeper down our throats when we are already choking. Comedians Danny McBride and Shane Gillis (which is another conversation) recently starred in a small skit for a Kalshi ad, which was bizarre but went to show that you almost cannot predict the weather. I know that meteorologists exist and there is a science behind it but just us regular people do not know what it’ll be like. Seems like a waste of money and a serotonin dependency that the digital world already knows it has us under.

The ad I saw about predicting the midterm elections came from Draft Kings and that tripped me out too because most civic citizens pay attention during the months leading up to elections by doing their research or watching campaigns. Betting on the winner comes naturally even before it happens. And then you make your decision and wait until the results.

Betting on election results seems to ME that those people didn't vote and are just looking at the percentages of Kalshi’s predictions and making a decision based on that. Promoting a weird agenda and during such important political history.

I usually do not pay too much mind to ads and I understand the meaning behind marketing but these ones are just weird and I wanted to see if I wasn’t the only one who thought this.

LMK, I’m curious if these ads gave you a weird feeling too.

Anyway, thanks for coming back. Love and appreciate any form of readership especially when I am not the most consistent.

XOXO,

☮️