3 ms·

If you grew up in certain communities or religious groups, standard playing cards were forbidden items because of their association with gambling. In many of t

If you grew up in certain communities or religious groups, standard playing cards were forbidden items because of their association with gambling. In many of these communities, obvious replacements like Rook decks [0] are somehow perfectly fine. Even though you can easily emulate a standard deck using this deck that consists of about the same number of ranked cards divided into 4 suits. Two things that are practically identical, but one is "evil" and one is not purely by association of how some people use one of the things. As a species, we draw some pretty weird dividing lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rook_(card_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rook_(card_game)

pjc50 2y ago
> If you grew up in certain communities or religious groups, standard playing cards were forbidden items because of their association with gambling. Yes, and this is extremely stupid.
- Spivak 2y ago
  Is it? If you go to any casino you'll see playing cards plastered on every wall and suit themed decor. Even games without cards use red/black. Media depictions of gambling are usually cards. People who go to Vegas take home a souvenir deck of cards. Casinos A deck of cards which you can use to play non-gambling card games but that doesn't use the same "branding" I'm sure works really well. It's hard to feel "cool" when you're playing with a Fisher-Price deck.
  - wink 2y ago
    Yes it is, potentially. Where I live (and grew up) the only game played with these type of cards is Poker, and we didn't exactly play Poker growing up - so all our local games use a different deck of card. And in other not-too-distant regions they use yet another deck or two. This might be the "worldwide standard" but that doesn't mean anything.
    - Spivak 2y ago
      Fair enough, seems like forbidden fruit trumps the branding disassociation.
  - gopher_space 2y ago
    The whole "devil is in this object" idea is something Christianity has been working to stamp out for centuries, and yet it keeps surfacing with our country cousins out in the hinterlands. Every major religion is comfortable with the concept of needing to go out into the sticks and unfuck the rubes before they start sacrificing children to their goat god.
  - oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
    Even an incredibly accurate sculpture of a duck is not a duck.
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      Yes but what if that duck statue is so appealing that you find yourself addicted to ducks, visiting pet stores looking for ducks, or wandering late at night in parks with feed in your pocket?
  - Maken 2y ago
    The universal symbols for gambling since ancient times are dices. Are those banned too?
    - sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
      No joke, growing up in a religious community that banned playing cards, I was given a ton of caution about dice. Dice for determining movement in a board game was somehow totally fine, but making anything more than that dependent on the outcome of a dice roll was considered evil.
jollyllama 2y ago
Past weirdness in the rules adopted by certain groups is not a strong argument for these rulings against gambling themed non-gambling games while non-gambling themed gambling games receive leniency. Rather, it speaks to the remarkable superficiality of these arguments.
- inanutshellus 2y ago
  You (and I) have the luxury of irrelevance and thus can be flippant in our opinions... so I see your point but if I were actually in charge of a community and a significant percent of my small community was diseased with addiction to gambling, banning playing cards seems pretty tame and reasonable.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
    Pretty ineffective, though. You don't need playing cards to gamble. The cards and the games that use them bring some established context and process which is certainly convenient, but they're not required to gamble. If people want to gamble, they'll tend to find a way. All you really need is 2 or more participants and an outcome to observe. Two shepherds watching a flock of sheep can gamble between themselves on which side of the field the sheep will mostly be on at mid-day. For my own perspective as someone who did grow up in a "no playing cards" religious group, it didn't help much regarding gambling. My siblings and I made wagers on random things all the time, including card games we made up ourselves with Rook decks. The "evil" connotation did have some particular effects, personally. I remember around age 8 or so, some classmates with a standard card deck taught me how to play "Go Fish". No wagers, just playing the game. I was still apprehensive to join the game, and I spent the rest of the day alternating between being afraid of my parents finding out and worrying that my soul had been damned.
    - inanutshellus 2y ago
      It's 1880. you're the mayor of a small town of 300 people and two girls have been sold by their families to pay a gambling debt. A mother appears in front of you, with haunted eyes and a worry-worn handkerchief in hand. "You cannot save those two missing girls, but you have to stop this from happening again! Help those that cannot help themselves." What do you do, Mayor Sjsdaiuasgdia? My guess? exactly what rational people did * Be vocal about the worst-case scenario * Criticize those that ignore the warnings * Ostracize those that ignore the criticism * Do your level best to discourage "gateway" behavior as best you can but maybe they're fools. What would you have done? Tell us, Mayor Sjsdaiuasgdia!
graemep 2y ago
I am pretty sure that Google Play judges these things by "acceptable to the mainstream in the US" rather than "acceptable to every small community">
themaninthedark 2y ago
Ah, so it is gambling adjacent! Can't allow that then. Just like us banning certain medicine because it can be turned into drugs... And how we ban knives or certain guns because they can be used for evil purposes... And words/phrases(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42675025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42675025)... Really the only thing I haven't seen recently (the US specifically) is sexulized content restrictions...
- thwarted 2y ago
  A subset of people come in an use something inappropriately, introducing risk for everyone else, and the easiest/cheapest way to control this is by restrictions on access to the item/tool. Tragedy of the Commons Ruins Everything Around Me.
em-bee 2y ago
same is true for mahjong in china. because it is used for gambling it gets shunned by people who dislike gambling, although it is a perfectly fine game otherwise. we loved it as kids so much that we were the only ones who kept borrowing it from our local game library and we bought it when they sold of unpopular games. i suppose for chinese it feels like playing poker just for fun.
gwd 2y ago
> If you grew up in certain communities or religious groups, standard playing cards were forbidden items because of their association with gambling. I was told it was because the face cards were derived from Tarot cards. Playing Uno or Rook (which had only numbers on their cards) at functions was considered just fine -- although of course any poker chips would have been so obviously Right Out that nobody even thought to ask. (FYI later on I looked it up and the face cards do not derive from Tarot cards; but these discussions happened before the World Wide Web.)

pjc50 2y ago

> If you grew up in certain communities or religious groups, standard playing cards were forbidden items because of their association with gambling. Yes, and this is extremely stupid.

Spivak 2y ago
Is it? If you go to any casino you'll see playing cards plastered on every wall and suit themed decor. Even games without cards use red/black. Media depictions of gambling are usually cards. People who go to Vegas take home a souvenir deck of cards. Casinos A deck of cards which you can use to play non-gambling card games but that doesn't use the same "branding" I'm sure works really well. It's hard to feel "cool" when you're playing with a Fisher-Price deck.
- wink 2y ago
  Yes it is, potentially. Where I live (and grew up) the only game played with these type of cards is Poker, and we didn't exactly play Poker growing up - so all our local games use a different deck of card. And in other not-too-distant regions they use yet another deck or two. This might be the "worldwide standard" but that doesn't mean anything.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    Fair enough, seems like forbidden fruit trumps the branding disassociation.
- gopher_space 2y ago
  The whole "devil is in this object" idea is something Christianity has been working to stamp out for centuries, and yet it keeps surfacing with our country cousins out in the hinterlands. Every major religion is comfortable with the concept of needing to go out into the sticks and unfuck the rubes before they start sacrificing children to their goat god.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  Even an incredibly accurate sculpture of a duck is not a duck.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    Yes but what if that duck statue is so appealing that you find yourself addicted to ducks, visiting pet stores looking for ducks, or wandering late at night in parks with feed in your pocket?
- Maken 2y ago
  The universal symbols for gambling since ancient times are dices. Are those banned too?
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
    No joke, growing up in a religious community that banned playing cards, I was given a ton of caution about dice. Dice for determining movement in a board game was somehow totally fine, but making anything more than that dependent on the outcome of a dice roll was considered evil.

jollyllama 2y ago

Past weirdness in the rules adopted by certain groups is not a strong argument for these rulings against gambling themed non-gambling games while non-gambling themed gambling games receive leniency. Rather, it speaks to the remarkable superficiality of these arguments.

inanutshellus 2y ago
You (and I) have the luxury of irrelevance and thus can be flippant in our opinions... so I see your point but if I were actually in charge of a community and a significant percent of my small community was diseased with addiction to gambling, banning playing cards seems pretty tame and reasonable.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
  Pretty ineffective, though. You don't need playing cards to gamble. The cards and the games that use them bring some established context and process which is certainly convenient, but they're not required to gamble. If people want to gamble, they'll tend to find a way. All you really need is 2 or more participants and an outcome to observe. Two shepherds watching a flock of sheep can gamble between themselves on which side of the field the sheep will mostly be on at mid-day. For my own perspective as someone who did grow up in a "no playing cards" religious group, it didn't help much regarding gambling. My siblings and I made wagers on random things all the time, including card games we made up ourselves with Rook decks. The "evil" connotation did have some particular effects, personally. I remember around age 8 or so, some classmates with a standard card deck taught me how to play "Go Fish". No wagers, just playing the game. I was still apprehensive to join the game, and I spent the rest of the day alternating between being afraid of my parents finding out and worrying that my soul had been damned.
  - inanutshellus 2y ago
    It's 1880. you're the mayor of a small town of 300 people and two girls have been sold by their families to pay a gambling debt. A mother appears in front of you, with haunted eyes and a worry-worn handkerchief in hand. "You cannot save those two missing girls, but you have to stop this from happening again! Help those that cannot help themselves." What do you do, Mayor Sjsdaiuasgdia? My guess? exactly what rational people did * Be vocal about the worst-case scenario * Criticize those that ignore the warnings * Ostracize those that ignore the criticism * Do your level best to discourage "gateway" behavior as best you can but maybe they're fools. What would you have done? Tell us, Mayor Sjsdaiuasgdia!

graemep 2y ago

I am pretty sure that Google Play judges these things by "acceptable to the mainstream in the US" rather than "acceptable to every small community">

themaninthedark 2y ago

Ah, so it is gambling adjacent! Can't allow that then. Just like us banning certain medicine because it can be turned into drugs... And how we ban knives or certain guns because they can be used for evil purposes... And words/phrases(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42675025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42675025)... Really the only thing I haven't seen recently (the US specifically) is sexulized content restrictions...

thwarted 2y ago
A subset of people come in an use something inappropriately, introducing risk for everyone else, and the easiest/cheapest way to control this is by restrictions on access to the item/tool. Tragedy of the Commons Ruins Everything Around Me.

em-bee 2y ago

same is true for mahjong in china. because it is used for gambling it gets shunned by people who dislike gambling, although it is a perfectly fine game otherwise. we loved it as kids so much that we were the only ones who kept borrowing it from our local game library and we bought it when they sold of unpopular games. i suppose for chinese it feels like playing poker just for fun.

gwd 2y ago

> If you grew up in certain communities or religious groups, standard playing cards were forbidden items because of their association with gambling. I was told it was because the face cards were derived from Tarot cards. Playing Uno or Rook (which had only numbers on their cards) at functions was considered just fine -- although of course any poker chips would have been so obviously Right Out that nobody even thought to ask. (FYI later on I looked it up and the face cards do not derive from Tarot cards; but these discussions happened before the World Wide Web.)