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Sports Betting Is Designed to Keep You Alone (The $150 Billion Loneliness Machine)

You used to have to put on pants to ruin your life.

Every destructive thing a person could do required friction — physical steps between the impulse and the act. You had to get dressed, get in the car, walk through a door, look someone in the eye. Every step was a chance to stop.

We eliminated all of it.

In this essay, I look at how the removal of friction from everyday life — from record stores to grocery runs to gambling — has quietly gutted the places where Americans used to actually encounter each other. The sports betting industry is the most dangerous example: $150 billion wagered last year, 90% on phones, targeting young men who are already isolated, with a suicide rate 19 times the general population for those who fall in. Meanwhile, a half-billion-dollar advertising machine sells isolation back to us as a lifestyle. FanDuel literally ran an ad of a man ignoring his family at a pool to stare at his phone. The tagline: "Cherish Every Moment."

But something interesting is happening. Bookstores are opening. Vinyl is selling. People are going back to physical places. Because some part of us knows that convenience without contact isn't much of a life at all.

The word for what we lost is friction. And we need it back.

— SOURCES —
All statistics cited in this video are verified. Full source list:

American Gaming Association, "State of the States 2025" — $150B handle, $13.78B revenue
USAFacts / U.S. Census Bureau QTAX — $3B state gambling tax revenue
STAT News, Nov 2025 — 90% phone bets, FanDuel ads, "Cherish Every Moment"
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine, Dec 2025 — 48% of men 18-49 with accounts, pharmacist story, 1 in 5 suicide attempt rate
QuitGamble.com 2024 Survey (3,200 respondents) — 18-24 addiction rate, 19.3x suicide rate
The Economist / Axios, Dec 2025 — Gambling helpline calls tripled, Rhode Island student, sports integrity skepticism
Marketing Brew / iSpot, Oct 2024 — DraftKings $36.4M, FanDuel $27.1M NFL ad spend
MediaPost, Mar 2025 — $416M total sports betting TV ad spend
Awful Announcing / Sports Business Journal, Nov 2025 — Mark Shapiro ESPN criticism, Pew 43% stat, McAfee $30M deal
Defector, Nov 2025 — ESPN Bet collapse, DraftKings exclusive deal
Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place (1989) — Third places concept
The Week / time-use surveys — Americans' time with friends dropped 37% (2014-2019)
Census Bureau via Current Affairs, Feb 2025 — Bookstores halved, 12,151 to 6,045
Billboard, May 2025 — Tower Records, Borders, B&N closures; vinyl 18 straight years growth; books outsell digital 4:1
American Booksellers Association / Bisnow, Dec 2025 — 422 indie bookstore openings in 2025
Coresight Research / The Week — 15,000 retail closures expected 2025
Derek Thompson / FT's James Burn-Murdoch — 20-24 NEETs doubled in 25 years; "Monks in the Casino"

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