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Gambling ads on social media reach more than twice as many men as women: study
- jagged-chisel 5mo agoIs this surprising? Expected? Simple observation? Presumably these ads are targeted intentionally to their audience, and this research confirms it.
- nemomarx 5mo agoGiven reported gender ratios I'm kinda surprised it's only 2:1. Supposedly 98% of problem gamblers online are male and I think it's like 3:1 in general?
- watwut 5mo agoThey are trying to break into new demographics. For a gambling company, women gambling less is issue that can be solved only by convincing women to gamble more.
- HDBaseT 5mo agoFork found in kitchen.
- ZhadruOmjar 5mo agoAn inequality that must be addressed!
- soupspaces 5mo agoThe list is long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inequalities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inequalities
- CSSer 5mo agoI had no idea the age range was so low! In my mind, men or women, my stereotype of an addicted gambler is older because they’re often retired and have nothing better to do. Or at least they’re in their 40s or 50s and are doing it because they’re… bored? Idk, I don’t get gambling personally. But this is a surprise.
- dfxm12 5mo agoYounger men are into gambling for a lot of reasons. It's just too easy to gamble when you can do it on your phone (especially when you're already on your phone). They don't think hard work will get them ahead in life (they are probably correct, given housing prices, etc.). They are bombarded with ads (during the games you can bet on!), influencers, etc. Gambling apps are gamified and give you a lot of incentives to keep coming back. Gambling is addictive enough...
- ziml77 5mo agoGambling and scalping (and the combo that comes from reselling things like pokemon cards and other blind box products). They really do seem like the only options for a lot of people to live the kind of life that they've been sold as the ideal. And as much as I hate that this is what is happening, I feel like that's what I'm going to end up being forced to try after 15+ years in working software development jobs, given how badly the companies want to replace us with LLMs. Hasn't gotten to that point yet but I'm shocked every day we're not laid off.
- noitpmeder 5mo agoYou say "a lot of people" but there aren't many of those. The scalpers/pokemon resellers/... making bank and posting on Instagram are, if not outright fraud, at best the 1% to 0.1% of those trying to do it
- watwut 5mo agoThey are not options to get that lifestyle. Any rational evaluation shows that. It is about how those men want to feel.
- AuthAuth 5mo agoIt started as a joke, we used to laugh at the groups of guys who would gamble their food money doing "feast or famine"they knew it was dumb and so did we. Then the joke slowly moved over to my group of friends doing so and we knew it was dumb and treated it so. Fast forward 6 years and its so entrenched in daily life every single guy I know at least casually gambles weekly on their favorite sports and some do multiple bets per day on games they dont even watch. I bet $20-$50 on MMA which is like 5% of my income each week thats considered low.
- Kapura 5mo agoAd Targeting Confirmed To Exist
- bitbeq 5mo ago25M and I live in a state where the majority of gambling is illegal (Texas). Despite that I am having gambling ads shoved down my throat daily on Instagram. I never click on them and I swipe away instantly when I see them, but still get them regardless. All of them are prediction market and mobile game slots.
- canpan 5mo agoAds target a specific sub group. And I think many HNlers are not part of that group. My guess is that ads online target people with more impulsive buying. Even if you showed me the perfect ad, I probably would not buy it. Because if I need it, I probably already bought it, and if I don't need it, I won't buy it. So there is not much money being made, ergo we get shown ads for the other type of person.
- deepsun 5mo agoYou may think the ads dont work on people like you, but often data shows otherwise.
- Paracompact 5mo agoPeople say this all the time, but I would like to see the data. And I mean specifically regarding the claim, "no one is immune to consumerist advertising," not "consumerist advertising is effective."
- noitpmeder 5mo agoIt's probably more "enough people are affected by consumerist advertising that it's effective"
- nradov 5mo agoThe data appears to be wrong. I buy a lot of stuff and services, but very little of it is even advertised. As Jeff Bezos says, "when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right." https://lexfridman.com/jeff-bezos-transcript/#chapter6_amazon https://lexfridman.com/jeff-bezos-transcript/#chapter6_amazo...
- shevy-java 5mo agoThis probably has to do with how men use the internet. When it comes to addictive stuff, as well as watching ... well ... nudity, but also high-intensity gaming, one can assume that males are more interested and active in this regard in general, on average. So if you are more active or spend more time, naturally ads would target you more. On the other hand, I use e. g. ublock origin so thankfully most of those spam-ads that are of zero interest to me, I never get to see. Contrary to evil Empires such as Google with its "acceptable ads" propaganda crap, I never felt any downside to perma-banning ads from my life. (Does not work 100%, but the reduction I got via ublock origin and others is enormous - and that's great.) Unfortunately some people are really susceptible to ads and addictive behaviour. I know someone personally who got into that, and subsequently also debts due to feeding that gambling addiction. It is very hard to break out of that cycle once you get in, depending on how the brain operates; similar how some can not stop smoking. Thankfully I never got into any of that because I also never fully trusted my brain, so the better strategy was to consistently say nope. But the brain of people operates differently, some really have a very hard time to avoid patterns that feed them into an addiction system, and ads also try to exploit this (another reason why all companies relying on ads should be removed, starting with Mr. Google, the AdCompany Number #1).
- nikanj 5mo agoYoung men believe, thanks to social media constantly repeating them the same message, that the only way out of a sad wage cuck existence is hypergambling. This text opened my eyes to it https://oldcoinbad.com/p/long-degeneracy https://oldcoinbad.com/p/long-degeneracy
- stephbook 5mo agoIt's true, though. The life Homer Simpson had is out of reach. The school system gives boys worse grades. Once you're a man, women expect their partner to earn more than they do, while women want the same pay as their male colleagues. It can't work.
- nikanj 5mo agoThe internets tell you women expect that, but observed reality doesn't really line up with that. Visit any Safeway and you see plenty of regular normal everyday couples where the man is not a billionaire, and the lady is not a 15-years younger nymphomaniac. People pair up with their colleagues all the time, despite the internet telling you that doesn't happen anymore. And they don't mind that their coworker makes the same money.
- itake 5mo agoThis feels like it sounds nice on paper, but there isn't really any much data justify it... Yes, incomes and inflation aren't lining up. But that has been true for a couple generations now. When you're in your 20s, none of your friends have houses, high paying jobs, etc. So home ownership isn't really a priority. You're not aware of the generational gap since all of your friends are experiencing it with you. Young people, especially men, are not great at planning for the future, b/c they think they will be young forever. I think its just men are bored. Dating sucks. Going out is expensive. Betting at home is wayy more fun than being rejected by women (on apps or in a bar/club).
- high_byte 5mo agoalternative title: 1/3 gambling ads now target women, massive increase
- Lio 5mo agoThese sorts of studies, on medicine, economics, etc. get a lot of coverage in the Guardian and on the BBC. I'm always left with the impression that they wouldn't give a shit if they weren't affecting women.
- huhkerrf 5mo agoI agree that there's very often a "world ending, women most effected" tone in the media, but... doesn't this article explicitly go against that? It's not complaining that women aren't being equally enticed to throw away their money gambling.
- cess11 5mo agoYou're commenting on a study that says something is affecting mainly men.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- glaslong 5mo agoSurprising, would have thought the target demo for gambling ad buys would skew MUCH more young male
- Balgair 5mo agoAside: Geeze, are we putting a lot of potholes into the road of life for men. Alcohol, legal weed, illegal drug wars that went no where, prescription drugs that were vastly over-prescribed, schools that were underfunded for decades, the near death of the male teacher, nearly no 'good' male role models, the death of the African-American father, the now near death of any American father, hyper-pornography in your pocket, tinder and the end of dating, and now hyper-gambling, video games infinitely more rewarding than real achievement, the total collapse of male third places, the end of labor jobs that gave men identity and structure without a degree, the school to prison pipeline and the poliece that have to turn routine discipline into criminality, gutting of vocational education, social media optimized for women's social dynamics that leaves most men villainized, the crisis in friendship, the death of male initiation or rites of passage, antidepressant over-prescription, the collapse of religious and fraternal institutions, etc. The throughline is that nearly every structure that gave boys meaning, community, accountability, and identity has either collapsed or is being actively dismantled by buildings full of PhDs. I hear the the young women say 'Men Suck' and are just doing away with them. They should, it makes total sense. And we're at fault.
- everforward 5mo ago“The throughline is that nearly every structure that gave boys meaning, community, accountability, and identity has either collapsed or is being actively dismantled by buildings full of PhDs.” I think this is under appreciated, in part because it’s incredibly hard to fix. There’s a void where the US cultural image of masculinity used to be. As an adult man, I couldn’t really describe what a prototypically masculine person looks like or does or thinks anymore. There’s a loss of identity there that we haven’t really rebuilt. I wouldn’t point entirely at the PhDs, though. There were some real issues that were called out (inability to communicate, over reliance on anger as an emotional outlet, etc), but the identity could have stayed largely intact. The killing blows were from segments of men who doubled down on the most negative aspects of masculinity, and made the rest of the men flee from that image of masculinity to avoid any association. I would rather drop masculinity from my self-perception than be associated with Andrew Tate or Logan Paul or whoever else. I don’t think I know any men that have “modern masculinity” (whatever that would mean) as part of their core identity. They’re either clinging onto a Chuck Norris kind of masculinity, or just don’t have a strong gender component of their self-identity. They’re not feminine, they just don’t do anything to be “manly”. Being “manly” matters to them about as much as whether they’re a Coke or Pepsi person.
- Vinod56ya2 5mo ago91 Clubl
- Tanoc 5mo agoIt's not just social media. At least once every two weeks I get FanDuel sending me garbage in the mail in the form of a giant closed envelope with their stupid purple branding all over it. As I found out, they're so determined for it to reach you that they even plastic coat the envelope and the paper inside. Can't even get the minuscule joy of burning them.
- tracker1 5mo agoI pretty much just buy a single lottery ticket now and then when the cash value after taxes would be over 100m usd. Basically it's a ticket to fantasize about the results for a few days, not a realistic expectation of anything. I've never been one to really gamble... the few times I'm in Vegas I usually set aside a fixed amount for gambling and usually can stretch it as long as I need to... mostly because friends/family are playing. I'd just assume go see a stand-up comic. I think that men, and in particular "cis white men" have gotten a pretty bad hand from larger society the past few years. From treating boys like broken girls in elementary school to pushing them increasing out of higher education circles, without a good vocational system in place. To lambasting them when they express any desire to actually form a family.
- kixiQu 5mo ago> To lambasting them when they express any desire to actually form a family. What is this referring to?
- fzeroracer 5mo ago> I think that men, and in particular "cis white men" have gotten a pretty bad hand from larger society the past few years. From treating boys like broken girls in elementary school to pushing them increasing out of higher education circles, without a good vocational system in place. To lambasting them when they express any desire to actually form a family. I believe as a cis white man myself I am uniquely qualified to say everything that you stated here is bullshit. It's just pure propaganda pushed by people that are manipulating you into working longer for less. Even under the 'pro-cis white male' government things have materially gotten far worse objectively.
- tracker1 5mo agoSo not gambling regularly is propaganda to get me to work more?
- edge_trader_41 5mo ago[dead]