The casino presents you with games of chance, and tries to convince you that you can win with some degree of skill. Some people do in fact have skill—or enough luck that looks like skill—and the casino tells you about their successes to make your own success feel more possible.
The casino teaches you the rules of the games, and in combination with success stories you may begin to feel convinced that with enough time and money, you too can manipulate the rules of the games and win big.
The casino employs every trick in the book they think they can get away with in order to keep you on their property, gambling, for as long as possible.
Sorry—I just realized, by “casino” I meant YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, the birdsite, LinkedIn, and myriad other engagement- and profit-driven social platforms. Whether you’re a poster or a lurker makes little difference; you’re still told the house rules and given enough of a peek behind the curtain to think that you can beat the house.
But you know the thing about the house. Even if you do win for a fleeting moment, you’re not beating the house.
Worse, casinos aren’t used as sources of important news or commentary on that news. They’re not used to communicate ideas or house creativity*. They’re just casinos. We as a species got roped in by social platform casinos to use them for our understanding of the world, and now we’re betting civilization unwittingly. And the house is winning big.
The solution to this is multi-faceted and not easy to reach, but it starts by recognizing the problem for what it is.
* Convention centers attached to resorts notwithstanding.