God of Gamblers
In the past two years, I can always hear the saying that "Hong Kong films are dead". For the generation that grew up watching Hong Kong movies, some BGMs have been carved into the genes, as soon as they hear it, they will start to appear in front of their eyes. For example, in "God of Gamblers", as soon as the most classic BGM sounds, the eyes are immediately a dashing appearance of a hair brother trench coat and a meteor in stride. Thirty years later, this image is still the "white moonlight" in the hearts of the vast number of audiences.
Gambling movies are a big genre in Hong Kong films, from "God of Gamblers" thirty years ago to "Macau Storm" in previous years, the gods of gambling in movies can always win over opponents and kill all sides, but in reality it is far from the case. When the bet between people gradually gave way to the bet between man and machine, the "lost world" was born. Each time the slot machine's lever is pulled, the player bites the "bait of luck" and keeps moving on to the next round.
It's not just gambling that can be addictive, blind boxes, short videos, online games... Bait is everywhere, they tempt you to constantly make choices, expect results, but because you are not satisfied, you become more and more anxious, and your addiction is getting worse and worse. These are the "tricks" that designers, that is, modern capital, play on you.
Wondering why you're addicted and how you can help yourself? Today I share a conversation about addiction by Richie, the translator of The Decoy of Luck. Starting from the casinos in Las Vegas and returning to our daily lives, when addiction is everywhere, how do we get out of the "puzzle"?
The following audio and text content is shared from the Inspiration Buyers Club online event dissolution party, which features the theme of "Living with Addiction". Sharer Richie, translator of "Luck's Bait".
Why are we addicted?
And how to save yourself
Narrator: Richie
"Luck's Bait" is mainly about gambling, but it focuses on a very important aspect - machine gambling.
People use slot machines and poker machines, not between people, but between machines and people. I don't know if you've ever been to Macau or Las Vegas, there are rows of machines, people sit next to the machine to pull the lever, the pictures inside will continue to change, if the pictures are consistent in a row, there will be rewards. If you haven't been to a casino, you can imagine that this is actually a very alienated scene. Rows and rows of machines, very densely arranged, people sit in front of the machine, everyone has the same facial expression, pulling the machine lever over and over again.
The opening chapter tells a scene that can be said to be surprising. Many casinos in Las Vegas are standardized with pacemakers, many people will have a heart attack in the process of playing with the machine, and the casino security will do cardiac resuscitation for people who have fallen to the ground. It's not that someone has a heart attack in a casino, or why the security guards react so quickly and skillfully. Surprise is the reaction of other people, most people when playing with gambling machines, they are indifferent to this matter, do not care about this matter at all, and are always immersed in the world they have built with the machine.
"In Search of Ozu"
The world built by man and machine, which I translate as "lost", would feel that this is a very alienated scene. But if you think about it and our usual lives, there may not be a particularly essential difference. When I go to work every morning, I habitually put on headphones for various meetings, and the communication software returns various messages until I leave work. I started working, I connected myself to a machine and became part of the machine. This is actually very similar to the state of the people who gamble in the casino, maybe I am not as happy as they are, but the whole state is very similar.
This book is about what is behind the addiction of machine gambling and how to solve it. I'll talk about a few of the points in the book that impressed me a lot.
01
Why are gambling opportunities so addictive?
First, randomness. Every time we go to pull a gambling machine, we expect random results. In our daily life, we have a deep experience, such as the blind box, in fact, the blind box is the ultimate of our current consumer society, and the satisfaction is completed at the moment when the blind box is opened. The reason why it is so attractive is because it has a very strong randomness, which is the same in the gambling scene, of course, it will do a lot of randomness-related designs, such as it will make the probability of winning the lottery lower, or let people have the illusion that they are close to winning the lottery, etc., are all operations on randomness.
Second, the feedback is very fast, and the faster it is, the easier it is to become addictive. Every time a slot machine is pulled, it may only take a few seconds, and this is done to the extreme that people automatically play it. You will find that throughout the process, the sense of meaning is rapidly lost. Why I was playing with this thing and what I was trying to pursue, it turned out that I didn't even play this action, just connected to the machine.
Jasmine Poker Game
Third, it is a more important point, that is, there is always someone to win. The casino design has a very innovative design, when winning, the tray spit out of the coin is deliberately made into a very large metal card, and the pallet is deliberately very far away from the exit. As a result, as long as we play gambling machines in the casino, we will feel that there are people winning all the time, and indeed there are people winning all the time.
Fourth, the more important reason is the subjective factor. The author interviews a lot of people who play gambling machine addiction, will find that they are completely different from our daily imagination of the purpose of gambling, we usually imagine that gambling is of course to win money, but in fact there are very, very many people, they clearly know that they are not to win money, and know that they can not win money, there are even algorithm designers who are casinos themselves, will also be addicted to slot machines.
Why is this happening? Because they are seeking a certainty. This may seem contradictory on the surface, but it is actually very profound. Because life is more uncertain than gambling, many people gamble in order to use mechanical actions such as gambling machines, as well as expected disappointment and occasional excitement, so that the cycle completely occupies their own thinking, so as to forget the more stressful or frightening things in their lives. Playing gambling machines is actually a way to spend money, buy the peace of mind or a short escape, to offset the 10,000 points of harm suffered in real life.
I've seen a TED talk. During the Vietnam War (note: the audio misrepresented it was World War II), heroin was used on the battlefield as a painkiller, and many people discovered the tendency of heroin addiction and predicted that wounded soldiers returning from the Vietnam War would have a huge amount of addiction problems, but in fact there was not. Because these soldiers are not used as emotional dependence to escape other negative things in their lives, but only to use the effect of pain relief, he will not be easily addicted.
02
Why would anyone feel how miserable their life is?
More tragic than playing a game that must be lost?
The first point mentioned in the book is a very important point: neoliberal society. The general requirement of the consumer-oriented society is that individuals actively participate in the consumer market and at the same time be responsible for all their own things, from economic responsibility to legal responsibility to psychological responsibility, to be responsible for everything for themselves.
The second point is cognitive distortion. For example, after 90 and 95, they gave up the million annual salary of the big factory to do short videos and lived a happy life ever since. I watch their videos, and I feel like I'm losing, the state of life that I've been exposed to in the self-media, the various short videos, the state of a person's success, how happy and happy a person is. I see that they will develop a kind of jealousy that my life is not worth living.
The book also mentions an example of a good thing that used to be provided by default, but now it must be achieved through hard work, such as: health. What is health? In the past, health was a default state and nothing needed to be done as long as there was no sickness. And what is the health of society now? Now the health of society is a state that must be achieved with great effort. You must be fit, you must supplement vitamins, you must go to eat according to the recipe, you must live according to a certain time and a certain way, in order to achieve a healthy state. What was supposed to be available to all people has now become something that everyone can't get and has to work hard for.
Requiem for Dreams
What does the default state become now? Sub-health, everyone becomes unqualified in this matter, it is a cognitive distortion, and all people feel that they are not good enough.
We now use the word management everywhere in life. For example, time management, experience management, skin management, body management, it seems that our whole life is doing a deal, and this deal we have lost, we have to redouble our efforts to improve head-on, to become normal.
03
Why is this view?
The essence is that anxiety has market value, for example, a product manager only knows, when shopping on a shopping site, there is a time limit between order and payment, which is the standard setting of the shopping site now. Why is there this setting? Prior to this, everyone believed that the time limit would not affect the closing and payment of the final order. But in fact, after doing ab testing, the time limit will increase the proportion of payments, because anxiety itself is the best antidote, and anxiety itself is the best promotion.
So the market began to constantly sell anxiety, including advertising. Very old advertisements very clearly say that I have a car to sell, what kind of configuration my car is, etc. The first TELEVISION commercials to sell anxiety were bad breath sprays. Very beautiful actress, but after the man approaches her, he will leave with a disgusted face, and the actress's face will show a blank look, why everyone left me. After the anxiety preparation is successful, it will say what brand of anti-bad breath sprayer the anti-nausea spray is.
Starting from this advertisement, merchants will find that selling anxiety is far easier to obtain commercial value than selling products, and anxiety itself has become the norm in the whole society.
Why do people now feel that life is not good? Because everyday life causes us ten thousand points of harm every day. From the objective standard, our current life is actually better than the ancient emperor, we eat better than him, can enjoy a lot of convenience, supermarkets we can basically afford to buy, so much delicious, eat every day like a lifetime can not finish eating.
Why are we still anxious in such a good life? Two points have just been mentioned, the first point is that we are responsible for all our own things, and the second point is that the whole world is filled with anxiety. We can do better, but if we don't do better, it's wrong, and everything will weigh on every individual. Then we might as well indulge in something else and let the mind go away for a short time.
04
How to save yourself?
The most important cause of addiction, the removal of the objective addiction itself, is actually the most important factor is ourselves. For example, quitting smoking, quitting smoking or quitting addiction habits is our own responsibility, and something must be done, which is not to return to the second point just said, but to make ourselves more anxious. I can't quit smoking now, so I'm a waste.
If you feel like a waste, chat with other people in WeChat, say you see I am a waste, I want to quit smoking how to quit, I am a person without self-discipline. Immediately recommend you three minutes to improve self-control, have a brain to learn, as long as nine blocks nine and only today is effective, similar courses will fall into a more anxious state.
I think the only way out is how we help ourselves. Is it something that everyone can do, why can't I do it, or am I already in a perilous jungle doing heroic struggle? If I can't do it, it's because things are very hard; if I do, then I'm a hero.
Of course, there is another way to relieve anxiety through nicotine (laughs).
Narrator: Richie Audio Clip: SF
Text Editor: Not Well Planned: Fu Fengyuan Aka Bob
【Recommended Books】
Republic 丨 《Why are we addicted》
[Us] by Maia Sarawitz; translated by Ding
Republic 丨 《Luck Bait》
By Natasha Dow Shure; translated by Richie