If I had a gambling problem, I suspect it would be made much worse by the deluge of adverts I am getting on Facebook. So far, more than a dozen opportunities for me to lose money have been offered and the more I hide and block the sites, the more sites appear. Even though I don’t bet on anything, I can still feel the relentless pressure.
The latest, from ‘Foxy games’, which is introduced by a talking cartoon fox in a suit, offers me a ‘£30 slot bonus’ if I spend, or rather lose, a tenner. But I don’t want to lose a tenner and I don’t want a fucking £30 slot bonus because gambling can be a very dangerous activity, which wrecks lives, families and of course bank accounts. Oh, and it literally kills people. Yet Mark Zuckerberg’s increasingly sinister social media company ploughs on regardless. And why? Because Facebook, like betting companies, gets rich on the backs of losers. Fact.
What is the point of hiding, reporting and blocking gambling sites, declaring them to be ‘irrelevant’ when Facebook encourages you to squander money on a new one? The algorithm must be set to ignore my instructions and comments. I hide Foxy Games and the next time I refresh, it’s a big unwanted welcome to Double Bubble Bingo and ‘Play £10, get 50 Free Spins on Double Bubble’. It seems the only way of dealing with the relentless attack – and that’s what it feels like – is to have a quick flutter. I’m not going to, but someone who likes a bet, rather like I enjoy a swift half or a glass of wine, may eventually conclude, “Why not? What I have I got to lose?”
Later on, the football comes on and once again the wall-to-wall attack of betting ads resumes and the promise of a better life, albeit with less money than you started with. Trust me, the person who boasts of their win on the Saturday football isn’t likely to announce when they have lost.
Smoking ads were banned once government finally acknowledged that it kills you, no ifs or buts. Smoking isn’t banned, but it is not exactly glamorous, is it, which it was barely a few decades. My own brand of cigarettes up until the last day of 1993 promised ‘the international passport to smoking pleasure’ and not lung cancer, often leading to brain cancer, stroke and that old favourite, heart disease. Smokers like me really did believe that we would be immune from the ravages of tobacco and only other people might suffer. I’m sure a lot of gamblers feel like that.
The important thing with betting adverts is that they are aimed at one thing and one thing only: taking your money. All the accompanying bullshit like ‘When the fun stops, stop’ can be safely ignored because if people really did stop when the fun stopped, the betting companies would all go bust.
Imagine running a business, the aim of which was to make people, usually poor people, poorer? That’s what these parasites do and I do wish they would leave me alone.
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