Gambling & Technology
When The Free Dollar Runs Out
By AG
OCTOBER 30, 2026 · 9 MIN READ
Prefer listening? Hear the full essay, narrated by me. (11 min)
Everything we use to numb ourselves typically has one main thing in common. It’s a form of quick reward that gives us a shot of dopamine. You can get drunk, get high, place bets, and participate in other not so blog friendly activities in a short period of time.
There are so many ways to escape how we’re feeling that I could list them like Bubba lists shrimp in Forrest Gump. “Shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad.” I could drag that list on and on like Conway Twitty in the Family Guy episodes.
The worst part is that these things are often at our fingertips. I’m one click away from my next mistake. Thanks, Steve Jobs!
It gets normalized, too. Turn on the TV, and there’s another familiar face selling you a good time. Apparently, watching sports wasn’t enough. Now I need to place a bet on the coin toss and crack open a cold one to get the full experience. I can lose my money with a buzz.
And when someone you admire is selling it, it’s easy to overlook what they’re actually selling.
Then again, if Gronk told me to run through a wall, I’d probably do it, no questions asked. Thank God the only things SpongeBob sells are Krabby Patties and chocolate. If he ever started promoting a Bikini Bottom seltzer, I’d become an alcoholic on the spot.
But seriously, why do ads make things that can cause real problems look like the answer to everything?
You know the kind of commercial I’m talking about. The party is lame, nobody’s having fun, and then some guy shows up with a six-pack of White Claws. Suddenly, it’s the greatest night of everyone’s life.
One six-pack saved the entire function? How many people were invited? One?
Apparently, all that stood between these people and a good time was a mango passionfruit seltzer.
Contrary to popular belief, alcohol doesn’t automatically make you a fun person. And being yourself shouldn’t feel like something you need a drink to do.
Now, I’m not saying everyone who drinks, uses drugs, or places a bet has a problem. But I’ve heard people talk about alcohol like it’s the fountain of youth, cannabis oil like it belongs next to holy water, and gambling like it’s their retirement plan.
There’s a difference between enjoying something and expecting it to fix your life.
For me, gambling became something I had a problem with.
Scratching the Itch
I know how easy it is to say, “Just stop.”
I also know what it feels like to want another bet.
Think of a mosquito bite. You know scratching isn’t going to help, but damn, you want to scratch it anyway. That’s the closest way I can describe the urge to keep going back.
I want to talk about how something that seemed harmless helped get me started.
Around my senior year of high school and freshman year of college, my friends and I started using an app called Fliff.
This was around 2021, before Ohio launched legal sports betting. Yet here we were, at 18, making picks on sporting events for a chance to win money.
This was puzzling to me. How could we do this when the regular sportsbooks weren’t even available in Ohio yet?
Fliff operated under a sweepstakes model. Different rules, different terminology. But from my side of the screen, I was still picking a team and hoping to win money.
At the time, Fliff offered a free dollar to play with each day.
That made it feel harmless. It wasn’t my money. What did I have to lose?
Then we learned there was a way to get more Fliff Cash through purchases.
Fliff uses Fliff Coins for its play-for-fun games and Fliff Cash for its sweepstakes. Purchases of coins can come with promotional Fliff Cash.
I understand that those distinctions matter in the rules. But I wasn’t sitting there studying the terminology. I was thinking about how many points Donovan Mitchell was going to score and whether tonight was the night Isaac Okoro was hitting a corner three to cover his line.
And once I was spending real money for another chance at a cash prize, it felt like gambling to me.
Something I started because it was free became something I was willing to pay to keep doing.
That’s what bothers me when I hear these activities described in ways that make them sound completely separate from gambling. The same can be said about prediction markets. The rules and regulations may be different, but I still recognize the appeal of putting money on an “outcome” and hoping to come out victorious.
I wish I could’ve predicted how much money I’d lose.
Looking back, the name wasn’t what mattered most. What mattered was how I felt when I wanted to keep going.
The free dollar ran out. The itch didn’t, and it was too late for bug spray.
The Social Revolution
Then there’s the entertainment side of it.
YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, X, Kick. We can watch people do just about anything now, and some of them reach millions of people doing it.
I think that’s a beautiful thing when someone is entertaining people, spreading positivity, or bringing attention to something important.
Turns out the real world is not one of sunshine and rainbows.
You want to guess what else has found an audience online?
GAMBLING.
You just predicted that in your head. Too bad there wasn’t a market for what I was going to talk about next. You could’ve made some serious dough.
The rules vary between platforms, but gambling streams are something I became familiar with, and honestly, they were hard to avoid. SteveWillDoIt was one of my favorite YouTubers growing up, and all this guy does is drink, smoke, gamble, and do charity work. It’s funny that someone who parties all the time also does great things for the world.
You get the excitement without putting your own money on the line. One minute, someone is jumping out of their chair because they won. The next, they look ready to launch their monitor through a window, and sometimes that would literally happen.
It’s entertaining for sure. But you see these people win a boatload of money, and you start to wonder, why can’t that be me?
A big payout doesn’t tell you how much someone spent getting there. Some streamers may be playing with promotional funds, so losing might mean something very different to them than it does to the person watching.
That’s something I want to know before hearing, “Use my code for a deposit bonus.”
To be fair, some of what I watched actually pushed me in the other direction. Shoutout to AyeZee. He was, and still is, one of the few streamers I watched who regularly reminded viewers that gambling isn’t a realistic way to make money and that you’ll lose in the long run. Watching him lose literally millions of dollars steered me in the other direction.
For me, seeing those losses made more of an impression than another clip of somebody celebrating a jackpot. It reminded me that winning wasn’t the whole story.
I’m aware of the joke that 99% of gamblers quit right before they win big, but casino games generally favor the house over time. A life-changing win is a possibility, not a financial plan.
I’m not going to calculate whether you’re more likely to get struck by lightning or bitten by a shark high on cocaine. But if your future depends on a fairy princess slot machine saving you, we might need to reconsider the plan.
Seriously, spinning random slots full of unicorns and rainbows, betting on Korean ping-pong at four in the morning. It’s not the way to live.
It sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud. But it can become someone’s actual night (I’ve been there), and I don’t think the ridiculousness makes it any less serious.
I know from my own experience that wanting to stop and actually stopping aren’t always the same thing.
Addiction Doesn't Have to Come In a Bottle
Personally, I haven’t had the same struggles with drinking or other substances that I’ve had with gambling. But I’ve seen people struggle, and there’s a history of those problems in my family.
That’s something I take seriously. I later learned that gambling problems were part of my family’s history, too. They just weren’t talked about the way alcohol and drugs were.
I might not know exactly what it feels like to struggle with substance abuse. But I know what it feels like to keep going back to something that’s hurting you.
Some people have a hard time understanding how gambling can become an addiction at all. It’s almost like they think something has to be swallowed, smoked, or injected before it can take over your life.
But I didn’t have to ingest anything to develop a problem.
The money was real. The urge to keep playing was real. And calling it something else wouldn’t have changed what I was experiencing.
That’s why I try to have empathy for people whose struggles look different from mine. I don’t have to understand every part of their experience to believe them when they say they’re having a hard time.
I was fortunate to stop before things got worse. That doesn’t mean it was nothing, and it doesn’t mean someone who’s still struggling just needs to try harder.
That’s why the way we advertise these things bothers me.
We make the good outcomes look normal and leave the consequences for people to discover on their own. Then, when someone develops a problem, suddenly everyone wants to ask why they couldn’t just control themselves.
People still have responsibility for their choices. But I think the companies making money from those choices have some responsibility, too.
If we can normalize the ads, the sponsorships, and the deposit bonuses, we can make room for honest conversations about the losses, the shame, and how hard it can be to stop.
And we can make asking for help feel a little more normal, too.
Discover more from New Again
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
