When I got laid off, I started gambling online. I soon lost my grasp on reality.
Photo-Illustration: The Cut On the third day of my gambling binge, a grandma dressed as a pharaoh said there would be purple unicorn charms at a graveyard. I think it was a Sunday night, maybe early Monday morning, but meth makes timelines fuzzy and booze makes everything else a blur. So when an anthropomorphic firework said it was the Fourth of July, I panicked. I’d started playing poker when the calendar said June and I knew I had enough saved up to survive for the next couple months while I looked for another job. But rather than buy food or pay rent, I’d spent that $5,000 on a bunch of gems with no real-world value. And now, all I had to my name was an overdue rent payment, a $75 street-sweeping ticket, and a monthly VIP membership for Casino World.com.
I joined Casino World earlier this year after I was unceremoniously laid off over text, mostly as a way to keep myself from drinking my feelings away. A “ social casino ” that skirts online gambling laws by using play money, the desktop-based gaming site is best described as “Neopets” for QAnon conspiracy theorists and retirees that type in all caps, who’d otherwise be chain-smoking in front of a slot machine in Atlantic City. Except the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino has nothing on Casino World, where you can gamble away fake “coins” on more than 40 free games, including Texas Hold’em, Keno, roulette, pai gow, fruit bingo, horse-race simulators, and slots galore.
For the price of a valid email address, you are given a starter bag of coins that quickly multiply through daily challenges, a healthy dose of “beginner’s luck,” and free “charms” that provide extra payouts whenever you win. Soon, you get used to beating impossible odds and play-acting the part of a billionaire high roller, betting millions of coins on one hand and enjoying the dopamine hit that comes with a tenfold return. But even more important is the false sense of […]
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