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Why Casinos and Strip Clubs Make Me Sad
I’ve been to Las Vegas on more occasions that I care to count, and never of my own volition. The first time was on a business trip, because in addition to fleecing the gullible and those needing to be punished, Vegas is unfortunately also a convention center.
Subsequent trips have been at the request of wives and girlfriends, all of whom seemed to think the place was fun.
For me, few sights are more depressing than rows and rows of blank-faced zombies eagerly losing money that usually took them a great many hours of labor to accumulate. Casinos dehumanize people, turning them into Poisson-distribution addicts desperately seeking a dopamine hit. Many step inside the neon-lit noisy rooms knowing they’ll lose and they derive some strange satisfaction from having fate (in reality, just statistical odds) punishing them for their imaginary quotidian transgressions.
I’ve been to a small number of strip clubs and lap dancing establishments too, always because business clients insisted. These places are unbearably sad, filled with boys in men’s bodies who seem unable to distinguish between illusion and reality. Fat, sweaty, obtuse men who for an hour or two derive a sexual thrill from being close (but not too close) to women who appear so unlike their actual wives and girlfriends.
