When I first heard about this game (back in Feb 2020, in the Before Times), just the premise of a casino that you can’t cash out of seemed crazy on its face.
How could anyone spend so much on something like this?
I made call after call and heard the same heartbreaking story.
By and large, people I spoke with were ashamed at their addiction. Some hid their behavior from their spouses.
One woman I spoke with even had her own brother change the pwd on her iTunes account so she couldn’t spend more.
From the moment I downloaded Big Fish Casino or Jackpot Magic (they’re nearly identical), I was constantly hounded in-game to buy more chips.
With chips, I could bet on a slew of casino games.
Like any casino, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. So if you bet more, you can win more. (What do you win? More in-game chips!)
Each time you come back to the game, YOU GET MORE CHIPS.
When you “level up” in-game, your potential winnings go up.
I’d heard from players how easy it is to lose chips quickly.
Once, just to see, I went from having over 109M chips in Jackpot Magic to just 650 simply by maxing out all my bets, and then losing on several spins over the course of a few minutes.
The game also encourages players to join teams (or form their own!), and compete in tournaments and other events.
And this is one of the critical differences between this type of game (“social mobile casino”) and an in-person casino.
Here, you’re pushed to be social.
That means your in-game peers can exert social pressure on you to keep up with your team — to earn your keep. As your team does better, you find yourself playing more and more, and betting higher and higher.
As you lose (and you will lose), you’ll consider buying chips.
"I have considered walking away for good but then I think of all my time and more importantly all my money and it's hard to walk away,” Crystal Fair, one player wrote in a court declaration.
This is the tragic story of how one man, Cy, got conned out of $1M. He was "pig butchered," -- that is, enticed into spending more and more of his own money on cryptocurrency. Cy was made to believe that he was trading gold futures and was making fabulous returns. But he wasn't.
Cy is a regular guy. I met him for lunch this summer. He has a family and a regular job at a place you've definitely heard of. He's told this story before to other media outlets.
THREAD: While I knew that some cities had imposed commission caps — like here in Oakland, at 15% — going back nearly a year, I didn’t know how often DoorDash had imposed new extra fees nationwide, payable by customers.
Summary: Oaklander was arrested on a street car for not wearing a mask and resisting an officer. Was jailed for 2 days. Sued the city of Richmond! (Would love to know how this ended.)
HED: Mayor Davie arrested
Stockton Independent, Volume 115, Number 170, 18 January 1919
THREAD: Exactly one week ago, I asked what felt like a dumb, simple question on Twitter: where to donate N95s?
@ETSshow and @jilliancyork were the first to speak up, so they got my household’s small stash.
But it didn’t take long before nurses starting contacting me.
@ETSshow@jilliancyork Very quickly, I received messages from nurses DESPERATE to be heard from.
They were frustrated at their employers, anxious to protect themselves and their patients, and baffled as to why they were practically having to beg for PPE, a term I didn’t even know until last week.
@ETSshow@jilliancyork I received a message from Oakland Kaiser nurse, who wanted to know if I still had N95s.
I asked around, and lo, neighbors, friends, coworkers had them.
I met this nurse in front of Doña Oakland and handed them off in person.
This piece began months ago when I started to see story after story about Ring and privacy by @dellcam, @josephfcox, among others.
I had a more basic question: does Ring actually stop crime? Does it deter crime, as the company claims?
@dellcam@josephfcox This is a major tenet of Ring, that it has the power to reduce property crime.
See the company’s boilerplate about one one LA "neighborhood saw a 55% decrease in home break-ins after Ring Video Doorbells were installed on just ten percent of homes.”