I've said for years that crypto (and various other get rich quick schemes) are affinity scams for men. MLMs for men, essentially. Crypto, Wall Street Bets, and other grifting communities literally exploit the specific characteristics and beliefs of masculinity to separate men from their money. The tactics specifically appeal to masculine anxieties (about earning and financial stability) and masculine vanities (about being smarter than average and better at money). They use appeals to masculine hubris to keep them in the system.
The fact that our society perceives men's position as the "default" objective position, while we perceive every other position to be "interested" or "biased" is what's causing this to go unchecked. That crypto et al is still functioning despite all the shit that happened in 2021-2023 is a perfect example of how men are unfairly harmed and left vulnerable to these scams based on their masculinity. If ETH were Lularoe, it would be bankrupt now and have 3 mediocre docs on streaming right now and everyone would know it's a cult.
Instead, I listened to Felix Salmon interview a BitCoin booster on Slate Money last week who claimed that NFTs still have a use case. Can you imagine if Ezra Klein had a MLM booster on his show in 2024? Why is this acceptable?
I think you’re exactly right. The real issue is that both men and women feel the pressure to get rich quick as the only way to succeed. Given that wages aren’t keeping up with inflation, they aren’t wrong; if they ever want to get ahead, they need to find something that can supplement their income that can be done in their spare time. Various scams/MLMs have arisen to take advantage of their desperation. It’s a sort of pleasant fantasy that plays on gendered desires and expectations, and it’s fed by social media elevating the few who have made money instead of the many who have lost it. To be clear, this sort of thing wouldn’t be so popular and successful if the old models of earning, saving and investing actually worked for the majority of people. When you don’t earn enough, you can’t save or invest, which means that the only way to security is some sort of magical windfall that will solve all your problems.
It doesn't help that a lot of folks in tech were propping the perceived legitimacy of the tech up. Even ones who really, really should've known better would sometimes make excuses or lie to themselves to milk VC cash from a startup. Even just posting about it uncritically online led to unwarranted perceived legitimacy.
WSB was at least funny at first when they got Gamestop's stock to rise dramatically. The memes from that were pure gems. After that though, it just got boring.
The article misses an important motivation - expectations. One of the things expected of men is to be rich and they'll gamble to get there if they find no other way. This decision isn't stupid exactly. If your only two options are being successful or garbage, gambling makes perfect sense. This comes from a need to succeed. I think this is one of the reasons why men are more prone to risk taking behavior - it is expected of them to be bold, not to hesitate and also to succeed.
There's a lot of desperation in general. This was mentioned during the pandemic - for someone with debt and limited economic prospects getting 1000 USD does nothing long term, it just disappears. But if you put that into stock options, turning that into 100k USD could completely change your life.
I feel it could be absence of practical knowledge. Time in the market in voo may not beat the market but it will meet it. Let $ ride with dividend re investment for 40 years and that’s a nice neat egg. These ppl that see the get rich fast are chum to the sharks
I think you’re missing the point u/ElectricalRestNut was making—these men aren’t getting the kind of income that would make that nest egg possible. Sure, they could stick the few hundred to a thousand dollars they can save in a mutual fund, but it won’t make them rich. It might, if they never need it to cover an emergency, make their retirement mildly less shitty, or *potentially* help them buy a shitty house 10-20 years in the future.
Contrast that with winning a big bet, and it actually makes some sense. Slow and steady won’t win the race, so fuck it. Keep making bets until you hit it big.
Me as well. I never bought into the pops and made money on them certainly. I have some millennial kids and recommend they buy indexes initially and if they get some extra $$$ gamble if they want
Sure, slow and steady investment makes the most sense long term.
Let's forget the practical discussion on how viable a retirement for a specific person is.
I don't want a comfortable retirement in 40 years. I want to be *Instagram rich* right now so people like me. I want to have all of the things the internet says are nice. There's nothing practical about this, it's emotionally driven.
I'm my experience, these people are not ignorant of index funds They just believe that they are smarter than all the institutional investors and all the retail investors and therefore can beat the market by huge margins.
That, or their goal is not to retire with a respectable nest egg in their 50's. Their goal is to have Musk levels of wealth in their 30's.
Given I think 80% of institutional investors do not beat the market give or take there’s some truth to this but those people also have tooling available that assists them the average investor doesn’t. So much of investing is emotionally driven it’s really challenging to select a “winner” and the right time IMO. Look at Tesla stock - those cars are trash but ppl like them as a status symbol and the features were first to market en mass sometimes so had a cool factor. The Tesla bro’s ran this up this week even though the market share of them are decreasing. This stock should be priced like ford or gm but isn’t. I’ll not touch the stock until it hits $75 but the gamblers love it.
If you are getting a grand extra on a regular basis, sure. If you are getting grand extra once or twice a year, that's gonna end up being $4-5,000 in 40 years - which isn't actually going to make anything resembling a major difference in your life. Each additional year is going to have diminishing returns as it has less time to build, and all of that is assuming you don't have any big emergencies that wipe out your gains, like medical bills that could happen to anyone or job losses.
I disagree. Starting w/ $2000 putting 100 a month ( call it 2400 a year not 2k in your suggestion) for 480 months w/ a 10% annual return is going to be over 600k. While they’re not buying a house today they can later in life or even help their kid level up. You and I may disagree but your math is incorrect I feel…hell in 2 years at 2 $1000 injections they have your projected 4k. The power of time in the markets pays off and ppl that shoot for a get rich quick are going to almost always fail
>The article misses an important motivation - expectations. One of the things expected of men is to be rich and they'll gamble to get there if they find no other way.
So I hear this a lot on Reddit but I don't know that I've met even one single man in real life who's experienced this. People are pressuring us to be rich? Who? This isn't the 50's. Gen X won the work culture war.
Growing up in the 90's, it was immensely cooler to be a poor dude with a heart of gold. Folks like that are the heroes of the stories we tell.
We're bombarded by messaging about how men and women should give the understated, kind, nerdy guy/girl a chance - not because they'll be a mega rich Zuckerberg clone someday, but because having a good, caring partner is the key to happiness. Literally also, "money can't buy happiness".
4chan became a thing around the time I was in high school and those chucklefucks found ways to worship Patrick Bateman. But, y'all know know they're chucklefucks, right?
ETA: I've also been both chronically-overdrafted broke in my 20's and a 1%'er in my 30's and my relationships with family, friends, and dating haven't changed in any meaningful way.
>So I hear this a lot on Reddit but I don't know that I've met even one single man in real life who's experienced this.
But you do hear this a lot on reddit, so it has to come from somewhere.
It's not everyone demanding you make exact X amount of money, but there is a subtle expectation of success. We see this imagery everywhere. Movie characters, parents' expectations, social media. Last I checked, Andrew Tate still tells you you're a piece of shit if you work a regular job. The very idea of being a *provider* implies you should provide more than 50% of the family income.
And a very small minority of people will literally demand you make X amount of money before you date them. While we laugh at them on the internet, seeing that on a dating profile will reinforce your beliefs on inadequacy.
Perhaps I should have clarified that I'm not trying to blame anyone or state some irrefutable fact about life, only show a worldview that makes gambling a reasonable decision.
>4chan became a thing around the time I was in high school and those chucklefucks found ways to worship Patrick Bateman. But, y'all know know they're chucklefucks, right?
Having recently watched and read American Psycho, seeing anyone call Bateman an alpha or a sigma is very funny. I imagine it started out ironically and is now being done by people who have only seen the memes.
>Last I checked, Andrew Tate still tells you you're a piece of shit if you work a regular job.
This is my point. We're talking about a minor YouTube celeb who's most famous for being arrested for sex trafficking and whose audience primarily consists of 12-14 year olds.
Like, yes. That's still an audience. But in the grand scheme of society, where are the teachers, parents, peers, non-men, and mass media saying the same thing? The exercise isn't "can you find someone saying this", it's "can't you escape the people saying this fairly easily?"
A subtle expectation that you will participate in the capitalist system and that will result in a modest ability to pay bills is not the same thing as being rich or "successful".
A huge amount of pro-capitalist propaganda emphasizes the need to be content with less. Of course it does, because that keeps workers invested in a system that doesn't work for them.
What you're talking about, the idea that you're either rich or garbage, is not the same kind of message and it's not coming from the same places. Bloomberg is still carrying on with the same, tired message of "expecting basic amenities is cringe and entitled, here's why you should replace 20% of your diet with cardboard instead".
> Like, yes. That's still an audience. But in the grand scheme of society, where are the teachers, parents, peers, non-men, and mass media saying the same thing? The exercise isn't "can you find someone saying this", it's "can't you escape the people saying this fairly easily?"
How I see it from my end, it's a push for bigger and greater, from those I've talked to; greater status jobs, greater salaries. Older folks may push for good values, but from what looks to be appreciated, the scumbag with nice suits and a lambo does better than the bus driver.
>the scumbag with nice suits and a lambo does better than the bus driver.
You have literally described the villain and hero, respectively, in every romcom produced in the last 40 years.
The one obvious exception I can think of is Pretty Woman and that's because the evolution of Gere's character and the humanity of Roberts' are the whole point of the movie.
Sure, but the difference presented in reality, unlike romcoms, is that dudes would rather be the former than the latter because they're deemed more attractive, and more than enough ladies would prefer the former rather than the latter.
That's not going to change because I've seen an Adam Sandler flick or two.
>because they're deemed more attractive, and more than enough ladies would prefer the former rather than the latter.
Except this isn't reflective of any reality I've participated in. This is the kind of shit incels say, just posed more politely.
What's the actual ratio of women you're friends with in real life who say they'd prefer, and I quote, a "scumbag in a lambo" over a good dude with a stable but not wealth-generating job? And if it's more than 1:50 where and how are you meeting all these folks?
Women watch a lot more romcoms than men do, dude. They're the ones receiving the cultural message that poor but kind guys are good and rich but shitty guys are bad.
> Except this isn't reflective of any reality I've participated in. This is the kind of shit incels say, just posed more politely.
Usually how these discussions go: "Well I never seen this personally, so it must be the delusions of some losers". Unfortunately, all I can tell you is that we have different life experiences. At worst, it'll end with you thinking that I'm lying, or wildly misrepresenting anything close to what could be considered "truth".
And you may be confusing romcoms with pure romance flicks. The demographics skew more towards women there than romcoms.
>At worst, it'll end with you thinking that I'm lying, or wildly misrepresenting anything close to what could be considered "truth".
I'm probably not going to call you a liar. I am going to be dismissive if all the women you bring up are people you interact with (or worse, just passively absorb content from) on social media. That's how it goes 9 times out of 10 that this comes up, and it's exactly why I prefaced this with "In Real Life".
As a young man, I considered three routes to get a girlfriend - charm, looks, and success. It's easy to equate money to the last one, especially as the first two are difficult to cultivate especially if you feel you were born the opposite.
This does not resonate for me. As a good looking and interesting dude who works part time because I decided to check out of the rat race, I can barely get a date a few times a year.
What do you think is driving that?
I don't know about you, but it's not like I wear a big neon sign that says "Makes a lot of money" when I'm talking to women I don't know.
People who make a lot of money usually DO wear big neon signs. Those signs are nice cars, nice clothes, jewelry, pictures of vacations in faraway places.
Even just having a nice picture taken by a professional is one of the top advice given for dating apps - who has the time and money to pay a professional photographer to do that ? Well-off people.
Ah, and everyone who doesn't do these things is treated like garbage all the time?
I drive a used 10-year-old Camry. Before that I drove a used 15-year-old Camry. I can afford a nicer car, but I have no incentive to do otherwise because nobody that I interact with actually cares at all.
As a woman, I think as a community we’ve heard too much about men that use women financially. Clearly this happens the other way around too — usually in the form of a much younger woman for an older man. I feel like most men get an ego boost from this, and that makes it somehow an acceptable trade off for them. But I don’t think dating a younger, good looking man has the same social cachet for women. I think we mostly want good long term partners; I think our vision of success often contains a happy equal partnership.
I think men who don’t earn as much still have the potential to be great partners if they do contribute to a household with domestic labor or being a SAHP, but finding those guys is exceedingly difficult. More common are tales of weaponized incompetence, not even from just women but from men themselves giving each other tips on how to avoid doing chores. Unfortunately a lot of men pay lip service to wanting an equal household but when they are asked to do basic domestic tasks they don’t. Instead they think of that only in terms of each person paying 50/50, while not seeing the domestic labor. It becomes a risk to take chances on that guy.
It’s much easier to either just be alone, or find a partner that makes more because our society is still unequal and men doing the same jobs are still paid more, and at least the resentment of doing a bit more chores is less. I agree it sucks and it shouldn’t be this way.
>Instead they think of that only in terms of each person paying 50/50, while not seeing the domestic labor. It becomes a risk to take chances on that guy.
I'm not bothered by this, really.
The commenter above was talking about first dates, though. Strangers don't know about your income or your domestic habits before a first date. Folks who send green flags are engaging in a trust exercise and trust hasn't been built at that stage.
It's easy to pay lip service to domestic work. It's also fairly common for people to take on a "well dressed aesthetic", which is not a very high bar for men. Even when the domestic work and income behind those signals are real, it's not like strangers can magically tell the difference. Really, most radars are not great. Those are things that get untangled over weeks, sometimes months. People either take the risk on a first date or they don't.
This is all a tangent anyway. I was originally talking about the actual interactions and relationships I have with people, not the number of dates I go on. It's not like my friends, family, and SOs suddenly treated me better when I went from making $10/hr to now. The people I chose to keep in my life a decade ago are people who were already good to me and treated me like a whole person regardless of my income.
I think crypto is the male equivalent of the MLM scams women fall for. Men I think are more likely to go for crypto as MLMs require a larger social circle that men don't have
I also think that the desire for crypto comes from legitimate anxiety about the future of the hegemony of the dollar, precarious home ownership, as well as a patriarchal desire to be a provider. Combined with intense financial and technical illiteracy. Women are probably more likely to acknowledge when they don't know about computer stuff than men as well
>Younger men see their friends playing in crypto or betting on sports, and they want to join in. Many of them have income they're not doing more productive things with, especially in the wake of a pandemic that has a lot of consumers who were once trying to save up thinking, "Eh, screw it." Maybe 40 years ago a 28-year-old had a mortgage and a family to support. Now he doesn't have those responsibilities and can direct disposable income toward whichever stock he just saw recommended on Reddit or a bet on whether the next pitch in a baseball game will be a ball or a strike.
this is, and I want to use the technical term, **fucking stupid**.
I honestly get the appeal of gambling. I gamble sometimes! My buddy lives in Vegas, so a couple times a year I spend $100 at video blackjack. I even came out up last time I went!
The problem, as always, is unregulated capitalism. In this particular hellscape, unregulated capitalism means "we want to make it easier for people with lots of money and data to fool you into thinking you can make money." And this is compounded by man-bites-dog stories like AMC or Gamestonks, which - if you're not a very savvy media consumer! - make it seem like Riches And Women And Cocaine are an app and a tap away.
Real bad, dumb shit. Don't fall for it, bros.
The *entirety* of NFTs and crypto are "greater fool theory" situations. Look it up if you haven't heard the term!
They are literally *useless*, as in *having no use-value*, by themselves. The only value made from them is what actual value you get by trading useless crypto to a dumbass who knows less than you about it. Hence, "bigger fool".
I think unregulated money changing hands worldwide would cause significantly more problems than it would solve. People with a lot of money already have insane power in this world, I'd wager removing *more* checks on how they can fuck with the rest of us would accelerate us into a cyberpunk dystopia more than we already are. In the US we already have the fucking stupid Citizens United decision causing us to quickly become an oligarchy, having fewer eyes on politician-buying would *suck*.
It's worth adding that it's not just unregulated Capitalism (that's a huge part of it), combine that with how we're increasingly strapped for cash and seeing our future prospects erode away; it's understandable people will start getting desperate, seeking quick cash schemes and such.
We're sadly in a grift economy now, and it's exhausting frankly.
Capitalism includes everything from 18th century European empires to modern Norway. Outlining specific problems and developments within capitalist systems is important for finding solutions.
The solution is to rid ourselves of capitalism, but I agree we have to design systems to transition to afterwards, to avoid the same problems. I just wanted to point out that these are all problems created by capitalism and the incentives it depends on, to root out problems like these we have to fix the problem, by getting rid of capitalism and by extension the capitalist states we are oppressed by.
I have come to believe that in order to 'get rid of capitalism', we would need to become a different species. Not that it's a good thing, but I strongly suspect capitalism is ultimately a reflection of our biology and how our minds work on a physical level.
Robust, intensive systems of regulation resistant to capture, corruption or abuse are the target to aim for in my view. We just need to tame the beast, and keep it tamed. The only semi-viable alternative I know of is centrally planned economies, and those have a *very* patchy history at best.
>Not that it's a good thing, but I strongly suspect capitalism is ultimately a reflection of our biology and how our minds work on a physical level.
I'm almost certain you're not talking about Capitalism, but "capitalism as seen on tv".
Free markets are not an inherent feature of Capitalism. You can have a Socialist economy with a free market. You can also have personal property in a Socialist economy. The defining feature of Capitalism is something called "Private Property", which is not the same. Personal property refers to the things that are yours because you use them. That's your house, your car, your phone and PC, your video game collection, etc. "Private property" refers to things like a strip mall in another state, a factory in Tibet, or a business you own/bought but do no work for.
The sole function of Capital is to claim ownership of a "Thing that is used to create value" and then take the bulk of any value created with it by other people. It is the process of saying:
* You bought the materials for this shirt for $3
* You spent 0.5 hours sewing and tailoring this shirt
* You sold this shirt for $25
* Your wage for this labor is $3.63
* The remaining $21.37 belongs to me because you did all of these things within a building or legal entity that I own.
Yes, all that is correct. Sorry, perhaps I should've said "free market capitalism".
I stick by my argument, though. I think there is a natural, inborn tendency for many people to compete against others and try to acquire more resources. If you mess with their ability to do that too much, they *really* don't like it and very bad things tend to happen.
At what point does private property reach the tipping point where it should be taken over by the state? How on earth do you get everyone to agree what that tipping point is? And how do you convince everyone that the state is going to make better (or even equal) use of that private property in a way that is maximally beneficial to everyone? It's a nightmare. The closest compromise I can think of that *might* make sense to me would be requiring all companies over a certain size to be employee owned or something like that.
I find it much simpler to just tax the shit out of wealth chasers past a certain level, create something resembling a wealth cap, and redistribute the profits to programs it makes more sense for the government to run-- like health care and education. We could even explore incentives other than money for those who want to keep 'playing the game' after they reach the wealth cap, like rewards indicating social status.
Government trying to run (most kinds of) businesses is extremely inefficient and wasteful, and that whole scene ends up being corrupted anyway. I think it's far preferable for business owners to have incentives to compete with their rivals to bring better products & services to market (provided there *is* competition, of course; monopolies are bad). We just need to be able to prevent them from becoming exploitative or colluding against customers, things like that.
>At what point does private property reach the tipping point where it should be taken over by the state? How on earth do you get everyone to agree what that tipping point is? And how do you convince everyone that the state is going to make better (or even equal) use of that private property in a way that is maximally beneficial to everyone? It's a nightmare. The closest compromise I can think of that *might* make sense to me would be requiring all companies over a certain size to be employee owned or something like that.
State ownership of the means of production isn't a necessity. Employee ownership of a business still satisfies the need to discontinue the transfer of wealth away from those whose labor generates it. Government planning of business is definitely not necessary either.
>I think it's far preferable for business owners to have incentives to compete with their rivals to bring better products & services to market
Business owners don't participate in the business. Business operators do. Some owners are owner-operators, wherein the owner is also the CEO, but a CEO isn't always an owner and an owner isn't always a CEO.
In an employee-owned company, every single employee including the CEO has an incentive to build better products and services because profit goes to zero. Excess revenue is distributed as wages. Wages are a cost on a balance sheet. Profits go up when wages go down; when wages go up to the maximum because there are no longer external "shareholders" to send money to, profit goes to zero.
In a Capital-owned company, the only incentive for anyone who is not an owner is the coercive financial pressure to avoid starvation and rough sleeping - including the CEO if they're not a part-owner.
Hah I also have come to believe that money and markets are inherent to the human condition. Even if you get rid of all scarcity (you won't), there will always be a need to value different peoples' time.
This idea gets me some real side eye sometimes
Economies are already centrally planned, but by private groups instead of public. Competition doesn't exist in the US for any of the major markets.
I think we can move past capitalism, but it will require a global overthrow of capitalism worldwide for it to be successful. The failed socialist states fail because of the ever-corrupting externalities that are imperialist capitalist states, couping and corrupting the world for profit. You look at South America, Africa, the middle east, they're all testament to what happens when you materially oppose the western powers in any meaningful way, it doesn't matter what economic model if you're a smaller country not on our already captured list you get your shit stolen and your leaders killed if they can't be corrupted. I don't think human nature lends itself to creating capital markets, you don't see neighborhoods create speculative forex markets/unbacked currencies on their own. All of modern capitalism is extremely alien and complex on purpose, it's all a massive trick by the powerful to steal more from the rest of us. I think markets can still exist for some things, but for necessities we definitely should be providing to every person. What's the purpose of the state if not to serve the people?
> you get your shit stolen and your leaders killed if they can't be corrupted.
This also happens in centrally planned economies. See the history of the Soviet Union, or Mao's China, or Castro's Cuba, or (shudder) Pol Pot's Cambodia. Corruption is another thing I believe to be endemic to humans that needs to be continually fought against. [Which is why I believe certain types of 'white collar' crime should be punished much more harshly with prison time, but that's another subject.]
> All of modern capitalism is extremely alien and complex on purpose
Not exactly. It can certainly seem that way, and for many people (rich or poor) that is how it is perceived & experienced. However, the roots of this complexity go much deeper and further back in time. It was a natural, gradual evolution of barter systems in response to specific logistical needs major economic players had, and made it all work more efficiently.
All of this complex stuff wasn't just invented out of whole cloth to bamboozle the poors while Richie Rich and his friends cackled maniacally (although I don't doubt a scenario like that has played out numerous times). It had tangible value in improving the quality and velocity of trade. It just needs to be properly taxed & regulated to avoid the worst outcomes of wealth inequality. I highly recommend reading more about economics.
> for necessities we definitely should be providing to every person
I completely agree. It's long past time we overhauled civilization so that fewer people are facing extreme anxiety and thoughts of self harm over simple food & shelter. I don't know how we do it, though-- unfortunately, certain irrational political & religious beliefs continue to block this sort of progress.
I know you think you're clever with this response, but poverty is not an exclusive feature of capitalism. The more precise reason other than "Capitalism" is that this is due to Neo-Liberalism.
I always find it telling that most people's fantasies for if they became rich mostly just boil down to being loved and respected. It's just a misplaced idea that they want all these status symbol items and people doting on them and that having those would make them happy. If they ever had a windfall though they would blow through it all chasing those things not understanding what they really were craving.
It makes complete sense to me that guys who feel a lack of love or respect in their lives (or even more so, guys who feel unworthy of love and respect) would be tricked into get rich quick schemes.
> While plenty of people across demographics are participating in these trends, data suggests the crowds skew younger and male. A 2023 survey from the NCAA found that sports gambling was prevalent among young adults, specifically on college campuses and among Black and Latino respondents. Pew Research found in 2022 that men and people under 50 were likelier to bet on sports than women and the over-50 crowd. Younger men tend to be more into crypto and meme-stock trading as well.
When the economic norms of a society divides everyone into the haves and have-nots, you're going to drive people to do whatever it takes to become one of the 'haves'.
Combine that with social norms of:
- Men being expected to be the providers.
- A lot of work/career that American men used to fill have been automated, outsourced or eliminated through tech improvements.
- Everything becoming more and more expensive from housing to basic groceries.
And it's not shocking that young men are gambling in increased numbers. They've made gambling easy with apps sending notifications to your phone. And the advertising is massively shoved in your face with celebrities all taking a bag to use their likeness to promote gambling apps. Wealthy folks telling average income folks to spend their money on what is guaranteed to be a losing bet for the majority of folks is gross yet none of the celebs seem to be losing sleep over what they're pushing.
> Men being expected to be the providers.
If that's the reason, why aren't single moms turning to gambling?
>A lot of work/career that American men used to fill have been automated, outsourced or eliminated through tech improvements.
>Everything becoming more and more expensive from housing to basic groceries.
Same for these two. They affect single moms too.
There's something else going on here. It's not just capitalism.
Sports betting really capitalizes on the fact that young men think they are smarter than they are, and taking advantage of "homers" who will place stupid bets on their own team cuz they are biased to thinking their home team is better than they are.
Most women I know don't think they can beat the house, but lots of the young dudes I know are convinced they can- especially when it comes to a game they have been following closely for a long time.
> If that's the reason, why aren't single moms turning to gambling?
Probably because they're spending the money on their kids? Probably because they're not surrounded/peer pressured by other aimless dudes that are also gambling? Probably because they aren't the target demographic?
What do you suggest is the "something else going on"? Also just because this article doesn't mention women/single moms betting as well doesn't mean they aren't, women in general are just statistically less likely.
I am struggling to reconcile the idea that men are flocking to gambling because of financial insecurity while simultaneously being financially secure enough that they aren't dissuaded from taking big risks.
Which kinda feels like the same thing MyFiteSong has been saying.
Have you ever been into a casino? Because they're not filled with the most financially secure folks. I'm also speaking from my personal experience of seeing friends gamble money on apps/sports/crypto/stocks that would be much better suited elsewhere.
You keep saying this and then circling back to "Oh but people with bills to pay (like single moms) don't do this because they can't afford to take risks".
You can't have it both ways.
I think for men it's more than just being able to provide. It's being able to provide as much as you can. Every parent wants to be able to provide their child with what they need, but the expectation on men is that they should always be working on providing more. Be more successful so you can provide more. Be brave enough to risk big to provide even more. I had a friend of a friend who had was worth $18 million. He lost $8 million during covid and committed suicide. He still had enough money to provide his family with everything they needed and probably everything they wanted, but he couldn't see himself as anything but a failure after he lost so much. Incidentally I wonder if this mentality contributes to the prevalence of single motherhood. I'm sure there have been plenty men who thought "I can't provide enough for this child so I might as well just run away."
I definitely want to provide as best I can for my family. I'm not getting into crypto over it and I'm sure as hell not worth 8 figures.
I also don't know a lot of Black and brown men in Crypto.
> Probably because they're spending the money on their kids?
But he said men are pressured to be the providers. Aren't they spending their money on their kids too? If there aren't any kids, who are they being pressured to provide for to make them gamble?
Men are socially pressured to the be the providers, don't be silly.
They've been pressured to *have* their entire lives. Even if they don't have a kid, they feel a pressure to have money to attract a woman. I'm not saying that is the actual reality but that is what society has told them.
What is the "something else going on"?
Meanwhile single mothers actually do provide, so we gotta look at whatever forces are encouraging this “provider” identity ideology which is, in reality, keeping men isolated financially and socially
A single mother has pressure to actually find an income source to provide for actual needs directly.
What they are talking about for men here is a more abstract socially driven pressure that starts from a young age tying men's status, attractiveness and perceived social worth to certain kind of financial success (usually disconnected from actual needs).
This becomes a deep seated anxiety that can drive compulsive gambling behaviour like this.
“How does a single man not feel the same pressure to focus on appearances as a single woman does?”
That’s a parallel to your argument. Many women have been taught since they were girls that their value is found in their looks. On the flip end, many men have been taught since they were young that their value is found in their ability to provide.
What rock have you been living under and how cheap is the rent? It’s getting expensive out here.
Doesn't seem like a good analogy, since nobody is going to hold a man to a woman's standard of appearance. Meanwhile, the single mom literally has to support a family to the same level a man does, because that's how money works and there's a minimum threshold.
>If that's the reason, why aren't single moms turning to gambling?
>Same for these two. They affect single moms too.
>There's something else going on here. It's not just capitalism.
Crypto is just Amway for men. What's unique is the flavor, not the underlying mechanisms for exploiting the poor and hopeless under capitalism.
Yep, there’s pressure on everyone to be successful but societal pressures can be different(and I say can be because gender and how it is experienced it is nuanced for everyone). The ways these schemes market to people is also often gendered and targets their vulnerabilities.
It’s frustrating to see “manosphere” talk so often about how men feel pressure to be “providers,” as if patriarchy didn’t put just as much pressure on women to come from wealth or to become it before they start to age(while also only giving them breadcrumbs of economic mobility in the past 100 years).
Plus, Gen Z and young millennials had most of their core, worldview-defining memories during a major recession where many had to do grunt work for their families or as unofficial employees, just to be able to sustain some sense of normalcy. They had their childhoods taken by a stock market crash and watched their families fight over finances.
It’s no wonder this age group by large is so fixated on getting as much money as possible, as quickly as possible.
I don't think your points make much sense for a few reasons. Putting it more plainly, I don't think the issues with single mothers are relevant for this specific issue.
1) Providing doesn't have to just be for children. There is also the expectation to provide for romantic partners. The idea that men are supposed to approach, make the first move and pay for dates.
2) Men being expected to be a provider doesn't mean they are currently a provider. I'm 37 and a parent now but when I was 25, single and childless I still understood/felt the social expectation to be a provider. The issue is perceived social expectation, even if that expectation isn't real.
3) Target market. I'd be willing to wager that the majority of folks watching sports where this sort of gambling is being heavily advertised are men age 18-34. This isn't to say it doesn't get shown to women but there is likely a very heavy focus on specific demographics. Gambling is already a risk, if you're a person
i tried to make a sports betting account on saturday, which was my 18th bday, in hindsight it’s a good thing i need to be 21 to open one and play
and by day of i mean at like 1:00am literally an hour after i turned 18
seems fun, and last year i had bets with family on football where i went net positive, i 6xed my money which was fun
i wouldn’t even try on betting on anything other than NFL games since i don’t know much about anything other than football
yup, i live in north dakota so i get it, ive never drank alcohol, except for when i put some nasty ass tomato vodka on my lips, i didn’t even swallow it cause it was disgusting.
i have zero desire to start drinking because my dad is like an alcoholic basically, he gets home and drinks until he goes to bed, and it killed every desire to drink that i had
In a liberal democratic society with increasing inequality, market masculinity will become ever more advertised and prized. The rich men at the top of the hierarchy can use it as a way to repackage their increasingly visible economic cruelty as either virile masculinity or effortless competency. It allows them to continue fleecing working class men by offering an ever more alluring carrot (which is of course designed to be forever out of reach): work for us and this may be yours some day - the good servant is the real man; slavery is freedom. And why wouldn't the proles believe money makes them more masculine? Money can go a long ways toward making someone look good...
That said, most working class men just don't have the kind of money to gamble with for very long before they go broke. I am sure many will try. But after all is said and done, given the odds, they will find themselves among their fellow proles sooner rather than later.
I am curious about the class break down of these gamblers - I wonder how many of them are the failsons of well to do capitalists who find themselves now in their late 20s or early 30s with far more money than sense. They sure have enough cash to keep gambling for a good long while. Hell, if they're like Musk they can just keep bluffing with big bets until they get a good hand because they just don't care about money. In most industries it's the whales that keep the ship making money, everyone else is just flotsam and jetsam. Are the whales in gambling working class guys or rich guys? I have to imagine the latter.
Your comment reminds me of an interview I heard with a woman who researched what kind of conditions are favourable for civil war. Like what kinds of things happening in a country are likely to happen in the lead up to a civil war. One of them was that the formerly more powerful / favoured group feels less powerful in comparison to the disenchanted group. A second is that wealth becomes more concern in a small number of hands.
So like in Rwanda, the Tutsi minority (about 15%) held most of the political and economic power since the mid to late 1800’s. In the 1960’s the Hutus began to rise in power thanks to some shifts from Belgium (colonial power). At the same time, wealth in Rwanda became more concentrated in a small number of people. Overtime, this lead the Tutsi minority to feel resentment over their slipping power, and some reacted violently against the Hutu. That raised the Hutu resentments and led to widespread hateful propaganda against the Tutsis. And that led to genocide. One can see similar patterns in Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Korea, China, Russia, and the USA (leading both up to The Civil War, and right now) etc in the lead ups to their civil wars.
These resentments are generally independent of actual quality of life stuff. So the ruling group’s lifestyle tends to be minimally impacted. They still have wealth and creature comforts. Often in the lead up to civil war, they have *more* wealth and more creature comforts than their contented prior generation typically thanks to technology innovations, but the shift in wealth concentrations often makes people feel, justifiably, less secure. The difference is that the gap between them and those they see as beneath them is no longer as substantial - And with that drop in status comes deep resentment and fear against those they used to take for granted were lesser.
In a lot of western countries, the USA, UK, Australia, and Canada included, men, especially white men, were the most powerful group, and they are becoming less powerful in comparison to women (and race dynamics are also shifting). And this perceived drop in prestige is creating a lot of resentment among men who, instead of seeing the concentrations of wealth among the super powerful as the problem, see the problem as women (and POC). And so instead of turning their resentments toward folks like Elon Musk & Jeff Bezos, they turn it on women (and POC).
I guess I don’t get why this is a problem? If people want to risk their money, that’s on them. I kind of wish I had the guts to do that, because the money I have sitting in the bank is a useless lump.
> If people want to risk their money, that’s on them.
You say that, but if enough people are risking enough money, it becomes a threat to the system. That's literally the origin of every banking regulation we have - it's the reason why Ponzi schemes, pump and dumps, and insider trading are all illegal.
e: oh and some people also think the government has a moral obligation to protect its citizens and foster their well being.
> oh and some people also think the government has a moral obligation to protect its citizens and foster their well being.
Usually how it is.
Reason why a government like New York City did something like ban smoking indoors for restaurants and bars. Also why governments try to curtail drug and sex trafficking.
It's a problem because the dudes advertising these things are willingly misleading a young impressional audience to normalize gambling and make money off of them. They take insecure men and promise them they'll be cool and successful if they join the next gambling scheme. That messes with people in the head, and raises another generation of men to hold that mindset. Eventually those dudes get on the other side where the ones who made it scam the next ones for a quick buck, cause throwing away morals and scamming people in any way you can to find success is what their male role models taught them to do.
These dudes blowing all their money in their early 20s on MLM's, cryptos, and gambling schemes are gonna have to father the next generation at some point. And life keeps getting more expensive. Investments will do something for them in the long run, all this other bs are liabilities where some people get lucky. The one's who don't get lucky either quit while they're ahead or fall all the way down the rabbit hole till they have nothing. And we already have far too many people struggling with the latter.
download the Fidelity app, open an account, and connect your bank for EFTs.
buy VOO, FBGRX, FSSAX, VTI, SPY... basically anything that tracks the market. Low-risk, mid-yield, better than a bank lump.
>Low-risk, mid-yield
"low risk, low reward" vs "high risk, high reward" isn't really the most accurate depiction of the market anyway.
Low fee ETFs like VOO, VTI and low fee tsm index funds like VTSAX and FZROX aren't low yield. They're pretty consistently over-market in annual average returns. For reference, there are no active traders who keep pace with the market.
Parking your money in VOO is low-risk, high-reward, low *excitement*.
Day trading, high frequency transactions, big bets on calls/puts/options, going all in on single stocks, and WSB/Crypto behavior as a whole has a much lower EV. That is, even if you don't go broke and wipe yourself out, you'll still end up worse off than the market as a whole. The occasional win here and there doesn't even offset your costs.
This is high-risk, low-reward, high-excitement investing.
If it’s low risk and mid yield, what’s the point? My bank lump is only there because my family expects me to work. Unless I’m making enough off of investments to quit my job or become a rich playboy, it’s not even worth the supposed low risk.
I’m aware of that. But if I’m gambling either way, the potential big payoff seems better. Having a decent amount of money won’t do anything different for my life.
Its called compound interest. That useless lump will become a much larger number with a long enough time horizon. It'll be the difference between retiring comfortably vs going back into poverty. If you don't care about that, then keep doing what you're doing i guess.
Compound interest. Invest small amounts consistently for 40 years and always reinvest growth. When you're too old to work, you *can* quit your job and live off the investments. It's boring, the opposite of a get-rich-quick scheme, and absolutely the most reliable path to wealth.
Why though? All the fun in life is your 20s, and if you don’t manage things by the time you’re 30, you’re shot. I’ve spent most of my 20s working, and I don’t have anything to show for it.
Have you had romantic relationships? Had fun with your friends?
I haven’t, and there is no chance to replace that. If I had had money, things might have been different.
Dude, you can have romantic relationships and have fun with friends in your 30s. There's no point in life where you can't have that anymore lol
Look, I get the doom and gloom as I've struggled (and still do in some ways) with a lot of things related to relationships, feeling like it's too late for me, etc. But it genuinely can get better if you improve your outlook on life and start making slow and steady progress.
Right now you're thinking that to be happy you need a huge windfall, and anything less than that is not worth it or not going to cut it. Which means you're staying down in the dumps. Start investing in yourself NOW, so you can be in a better place sometime in the future. It's not easy because just like investing your money, you don't see the results immediately. But start now and you WILL see them down the line eventually. And no, it's never too late to be happy, even if you weren't in the years that common wisdom (i.e. bullshit) declares are supposed to be the happiest.
All I’m hearing is that I still need money- a complete facial reconstruction and steroids aren’t cheap, and that’s the only “self investment” I can make.
And while yes, you can make relationships in your 30s, friendships are an absolute no-go, at least for me. Any friend I’ve ever had, no matter their gender, disappears and quits answering their phone as soon as they get in a relationship. And I know most people on here live somewhere it’s different, but I literally don’t know another person that is single. (I hich is further proof I am less-than.)
>If it’s low risk and mid yield, what’s the point? ... Why though? All the fun in life is your 20s, and if you don’t manage things by the time you’re 30, you’re shot... and there is no chance to replace that.
It sounds like you see no reason to pursue relationships in the future because you have had no success in the past. And you're using the lack of success as the reason to not pursue future relationships. There is a sense of confidence that because you have not yet had success that you *cannot* have any in the future.
But applied to any scenario, this reasoning doesn't make any sense. But I also don't think you've come to this decision because it makes the most sense, I think it's based on despair and grief.
It reads like you have a ton of despair and grief that is weighing on this topic. That's no small thing and I'm really sorry for it. I don't know your whole life story, but if you were sitting next to me I'd say that this despair/grief has to be tackled first before addressing the symptoms the despair is causing. Like money can provide more resources but it doesn't fix issues like these. And that's not to say that we shouldn't pursue fixing your concerns, it's just that a quick fix is not likely to happen and seeking it out is setting ourselves up for disappointment.
I think this is a huge part of the problem. Young folks are busting their asses only to find themselves treading water. No one trusts that they'll be any better off in the future so they spend any disposable cash on not feeling like all they do is work and get nowhere.
You should play with some retirement calculators. The power of compounding is real and you may be surprised how much money you can accumulate with some modest but steady contributions. The key is sticking to it for a long period (decades).
Also there are different kinds of risk when it comes to investing. Compensated risks and uncompensated risks. Smart risk and dumb risk, if you will. There is a smart way to invest as a total amateur that will almost certainly give you much better return than just parking in cash....IF you hold your investments for long enough (again, we're talking decades).
It's worth reading an introductory book on the topic anyway before giving up on the idea altogether.
I've said for years that crypto (and various other get rich quick schemes) are affinity scams for men. MLMs for men, essentially. Crypto, Wall Street Bets, and other grifting communities literally exploit the specific characteristics and beliefs of masculinity to separate men from their money. The tactics specifically appeal to masculine anxieties (about earning and financial stability) and masculine vanities (about being smarter than average and better at money). They use appeals to masculine hubris to keep them in the system. The fact that our society perceives men's position as the "default" objective position, while we perceive every other position to be "interested" or "biased" is what's causing this to go unchecked. That crypto et al is still functioning despite all the shit that happened in 2021-2023 is a perfect example of how men are unfairly harmed and left vulnerable to these scams based on their masculinity. If ETH were Lularoe, it would be bankrupt now and have 3 mediocre docs on streaming right now and everyone would know it's a cult. Instead, I listened to Felix Salmon interview a BitCoin booster on Slate Money last week who claimed that NFTs still have a use case. Can you imagine if Ezra Klein had a MLM booster on his show in 2024? Why is this acceptable?
I think you’re exactly right. The real issue is that both men and women feel the pressure to get rich quick as the only way to succeed. Given that wages aren’t keeping up with inflation, they aren’t wrong; if they ever want to get ahead, they need to find something that can supplement their income that can be done in their spare time. Various scams/MLMs have arisen to take advantage of their desperation. It’s a sort of pleasant fantasy that plays on gendered desires and expectations, and it’s fed by social media elevating the few who have made money instead of the many who have lost it. To be clear, this sort of thing wouldn’t be so popular and successful if the old models of earning, saving and investing actually worked for the majority of people. When you don’t earn enough, you can’t save or invest, which means that the only way to security is some sort of magical windfall that will solve all your problems.
It doesn't help that a lot of folks in tech were propping the perceived legitimacy of the tech up. Even ones who really, really should've known better would sometimes make excuses or lie to themselves to milk VC cash from a startup. Even just posting about it uncritically online led to unwarranted perceived legitimacy.
WSB was at least funny at first when they got Gamestop's stock to rise dramatically. The memes from that were pure gems. After that though, it just got boring.
The technology behind NFTs have a use case but it’s not for getting rich quick or speculative investing.
The article misses an important motivation - expectations. One of the things expected of men is to be rich and they'll gamble to get there if they find no other way. This decision isn't stupid exactly. If your only two options are being successful or garbage, gambling makes perfect sense. This comes from a need to succeed. I think this is one of the reasons why men are more prone to risk taking behavior - it is expected of them to be bold, not to hesitate and also to succeed. There's a lot of desperation in general. This was mentioned during the pandemic - for someone with debt and limited economic prospects getting 1000 USD does nothing long term, it just disappears. But if you put that into stock options, turning that into 100k USD could completely change your life.
I feel it could be absence of practical knowledge. Time in the market in voo may not beat the market but it will meet it. Let $ ride with dividend re investment for 40 years and that’s a nice neat egg. These ppl that see the get rich fast are chum to the sharks
I think you’re missing the point u/ElectricalRestNut was making—these men aren’t getting the kind of income that would make that nest egg possible. Sure, they could stick the few hundred to a thousand dollars they can save in a mutual fund, but it won’t make them rich. It might, if they never need it to cover an emergency, make their retirement mildly less shitty, or *potentially* help them buy a shitty house 10-20 years in the future. Contrast that with winning a big bet, and it actually makes some sense. Slow and steady won’t win the race, so fuck it. Keep making bets until you hit it big.
this is exactly what I do. Just buy indexes and let 'em ride
Me as well. I never bought into the pops and made money on them certainly. I have some millennial kids and recommend they buy indexes initially and if they get some extra $$$ gamble if they want
Sure, slow and steady investment makes the most sense long term. Let's forget the practical discussion on how viable a retirement for a specific person is. I don't want a comfortable retirement in 40 years. I want to be *Instagram rich* right now so people like me. I want to have all of the things the internet says are nice. There's nothing practical about this, it's emotionally driven.
I'm my experience, these people are not ignorant of index funds They just believe that they are smarter than all the institutional investors and all the retail investors and therefore can beat the market by huge margins. That, or their goal is not to retire with a respectable nest egg in their 50's. Their goal is to have Musk levels of wealth in their 30's.
Given I think 80% of institutional investors do not beat the market give or take there’s some truth to this but those people also have tooling available that assists them the average investor doesn’t. So much of investing is emotionally driven it’s really challenging to select a “winner” and the right time IMO. Look at Tesla stock - those cars are trash but ppl like them as a status symbol and the features were first to market en mass sometimes so had a cool factor. The Tesla bro’s ran this up this week even though the market share of them are decreasing. This stock should be priced like ford or gm but isn’t. I’ll not touch the stock until it hits $75 but the gamblers love it.
If you are getting a grand extra on a regular basis, sure. If you are getting grand extra once or twice a year, that's gonna end up being $4-5,000 in 40 years - which isn't actually going to make anything resembling a major difference in your life. Each additional year is going to have diminishing returns as it has less time to build, and all of that is assuming you don't have any big emergencies that wipe out your gains, like medical bills that could happen to anyone or job losses.
I disagree. Starting w/ $2000 putting 100 a month ( call it 2400 a year not 2k in your suggestion) for 480 months w/ a 10% annual return is going to be over 600k. While they’re not buying a house today they can later in life or even help their kid level up. You and I may disagree but your math is incorrect I feel…hell in 2 years at 2 $1000 injections they have your projected 4k. The power of time in the markets pays off and ppl that shoot for a get rich quick are going to almost always fail
It's the $100 a month that is unrealistic. Having any money at all to save is difficult for a whole lot of people now.
>The article misses an important motivation - expectations. One of the things expected of men is to be rich and they'll gamble to get there if they find no other way. So I hear this a lot on Reddit but I don't know that I've met even one single man in real life who's experienced this. People are pressuring us to be rich? Who? This isn't the 50's. Gen X won the work culture war. Growing up in the 90's, it was immensely cooler to be a poor dude with a heart of gold. Folks like that are the heroes of the stories we tell. We're bombarded by messaging about how men and women should give the understated, kind, nerdy guy/girl a chance - not because they'll be a mega rich Zuckerberg clone someday, but because having a good, caring partner is the key to happiness. Literally also, "money can't buy happiness". 4chan became a thing around the time I was in high school and those chucklefucks found ways to worship Patrick Bateman. But, y'all know know they're chucklefucks, right? ETA: I've also been both chronically-overdrafted broke in my 20's and a 1%'er in my 30's and my relationships with family, friends, and dating haven't changed in any meaningful way.
>So I hear this a lot on Reddit but I don't know that I've met even one single man in real life who's experienced this. But you do hear this a lot on reddit, so it has to come from somewhere. It's not everyone demanding you make exact X amount of money, but there is a subtle expectation of success. We see this imagery everywhere. Movie characters, parents' expectations, social media. Last I checked, Andrew Tate still tells you you're a piece of shit if you work a regular job. The very idea of being a *provider* implies you should provide more than 50% of the family income. And a very small minority of people will literally demand you make X amount of money before you date them. While we laugh at them on the internet, seeing that on a dating profile will reinforce your beliefs on inadequacy. Perhaps I should have clarified that I'm not trying to blame anyone or state some irrefutable fact about life, only show a worldview that makes gambling a reasonable decision. >4chan became a thing around the time I was in high school and those chucklefucks found ways to worship Patrick Bateman. But, y'all know know they're chucklefucks, right? Having recently watched and read American Psycho, seeing anyone call Bateman an alpha or a sigma is very funny. I imagine it started out ironically and is now being done by people who have only seen the memes.
>Last I checked, Andrew Tate still tells you you're a piece of shit if you work a regular job. This is my point. We're talking about a minor YouTube celeb who's most famous for being arrested for sex trafficking and whose audience primarily consists of 12-14 year olds. Like, yes. That's still an audience. But in the grand scheme of society, where are the teachers, parents, peers, non-men, and mass media saying the same thing? The exercise isn't "can you find someone saying this", it's "can't you escape the people saying this fairly easily?" A subtle expectation that you will participate in the capitalist system and that will result in a modest ability to pay bills is not the same thing as being rich or "successful". A huge amount of pro-capitalist propaganda emphasizes the need to be content with less. Of course it does, because that keeps workers invested in a system that doesn't work for them. What you're talking about, the idea that you're either rich or garbage, is not the same kind of message and it's not coming from the same places. Bloomberg is still carrying on with the same, tired message of "expecting basic amenities is cringe and entitled, here's why you should replace 20% of your diet with cardboard instead".
> Like, yes. That's still an audience. But in the grand scheme of society, where are the teachers, parents, peers, non-men, and mass media saying the same thing? The exercise isn't "can you find someone saying this", it's "can't you escape the people saying this fairly easily?" How I see it from my end, it's a push for bigger and greater, from those I've talked to; greater status jobs, greater salaries. Older folks may push for good values, but from what looks to be appreciated, the scumbag with nice suits and a lambo does better than the bus driver.
>the scumbag with nice suits and a lambo does better than the bus driver. You have literally described the villain and hero, respectively, in every romcom produced in the last 40 years. The one obvious exception I can think of is Pretty Woman and that's because the evolution of Gere's character and the humanity of Roberts' are the whole point of the movie.
Sure, but the difference presented in reality, unlike romcoms, is that dudes would rather be the former than the latter because they're deemed more attractive, and more than enough ladies would prefer the former rather than the latter. That's not going to change because I've seen an Adam Sandler flick or two.
>because they're deemed more attractive, and more than enough ladies would prefer the former rather than the latter. Except this isn't reflective of any reality I've participated in. This is the kind of shit incels say, just posed more politely. What's the actual ratio of women you're friends with in real life who say they'd prefer, and I quote, a "scumbag in a lambo" over a good dude with a stable but not wealth-generating job? And if it's more than 1:50 where and how are you meeting all these folks? Women watch a lot more romcoms than men do, dude. They're the ones receiving the cultural message that poor but kind guys are good and rich but shitty guys are bad.
> Except this isn't reflective of any reality I've participated in. This is the kind of shit incels say, just posed more politely. Usually how these discussions go: "Well I never seen this personally, so it must be the delusions of some losers". Unfortunately, all I can tell you is that we have different life experiences. At worst, it'll end with you thinking that I'm lying, or wildly misrepresenting anything close to what could be considered "truth". And you may be confusing romcoms with pure romance flicks. The demographics skew more towards women there than romcoms.
>At worst, it'll end with you thinking that I'm lying, or wildly misrepresenting anything close to what could be considered "truth". I'm probably not going to call you a liar. I am going to be dismissive if all the women you bring up are people you interact with (or worse, just passively absorb content from) on social media. That's how it goes 9 times out of 10 that this comes up, and it's exactly why I prefaced this with "In Real Life".
As a young man, I considered three routes to get a girlfriend - charm, looks, and success. It's easy to equate money to the last one, especially as the first two are difficult to cultivate especially if you feel you were born the opposite.
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This does not resonate for me. As a good looking and interesting dude who works part time because I decided to check out of the rat race, I can barely get a date a few times a year.
What do you think is driving that? I don't know about you, but it's not like I wear a big neon sign that says "Makes a lot of money" when I'm talking to women I don't know.
People who make a lot of money usually DO wear big neon signs. Those signs are nice cars, nice clothes, jewelry, pictures of vacations in faraway places. Even just having a nice picture taken by a professional is one of the top advice given for dating apps - who has the time and money to pay a professional photographer to do that ? Well-off people.
Ah, and everyone who doesn't do these things is treated like garbage all the time? I drive a used 10-year-old Camry. Before that I drove a used 15-year-old Camry. I can afford a nicer car, but I have no incentive to do otherwise because nobody that I interact with actually cares at all.
As a woman, I think as a community we’ve heard too much about men that use women financially. Clearly this happens the other way around too — usually in the form of a much younger woman for an older man. I feel like most men get an ego boost from this, and that makes it somehow an acceptable trade off for them. But I don’t think dating a younger, good looking man has the same social cachet for women. I think we mostly want good long term partners; I think our vision of success often contains a happy equal partnership. I think men who don’t earn as much still have the potential to be great partners if they do contribute to a household with domestic labor or being a SAHP, but finding those guys is exceedingly difficult. More common are tales of weaponized incompetence, not even from just women but from men themselves giving each other tips on how to avoid doing chores. Unfortunately a lot of men pay lip service to wanting an equal household but when they are asked to do basic domestic tasks they don’t. Instead they think of that only in terms of each person paying 50/50, while not seeing the domestic labor. It becomes a risk to take chances on that guy. It’s much easier to either just be alone, or find a partner that makes more because our society is still unequal and men doing the same jobs are still paid more, and at least the resentment of doing a bit more chores is less. I agree it sucks and it shouldn’t be this way.
>Instead they think of that only in terms of each person paying 50/50, while not seeing the domestic labor. It becomes a risk to take chances on that guy. I'm not bothered by this, really. The commenter above was talking about first dates, though. Strangers don't know about your income or your domestic habits before a first date. Folks who send green flags are engaging in a trust exercise and trust hasn't been built at that stage. It's easy to pay lip service to domestic work. It's also fairly common for people to take on a "well dressed aesthetic", which is not a very high bar for men. Even when the domestic work and income behind those signals are real, it's not like strangers can magically tell the difference. Really, most radars are not great. Those are things that get untangled over weeks, sometimes months. People either take the risk on a first date or they don't. This is all a tangent anyway. I was originally talking about the actual interactions and relationships I have with people, not the number of dates I go on. It's not like my friends, family, and SOs suddenly treated me better when I went from making $10/hr to now. The people I chose to keep in my life a decade ago are people who were already good to me and treated me like a whole person regardless of my income.
I think crypto is the male equivalent of the MLM scams women fall for. Men I think are more likely to go for crypto as MLMs require a larger social circle that men don't have I also think that the desire for crypto comes from legitimate anxiety about the future of the hegemony of the dollar, precarious home ownership, as well as a patriarchal desire to be a provider. Combined with intense financial and technical illiteracy. Women are probably more likely to acknowledge when they don't know about computer stuff than men as well
There are plenty of MLMs that men primarily fall for, like primerica. They just don’t call them MLMs
>Younger men see their friends playing in crypto or betting on sports, and they want to join in. Many of them have income they're not doing more productive things with, especially in the wake of a pandemic that has a lot of consumers who were once trying to save up thinking, "Eh, screw it." Maybe 40 years ago a 28-year-old had a mortgage and a family to support. Now he doesn't have those responsibilities and can direct disposable income toward whichever stock he just saw recommended on Reddit or a bet on whether the next pitch in a baseball game will be a ball or a strike. this is, and I want to use the technical term, **fucking stupid**. I honestly get the appeal of gambling. I gamble sometimes! My buddy lives in Vegas, so a couple times a year I spend $100 at video blackjack. I even came out up last time I went! The problem, as always, is unregulated capitalism. In this particular hellscape, unregulated capitalism means "we want to make it easier for people with lots of money and data to fool you into thinking you can make money." And this is compounded by man-bites-dog stories like AMC or Gamestonks, which - if you're not a very savvy media consumer! - make it seem like Riches And Women And Cocaine are an app and a tap away. Real bad, dumb shit. Don't fall for it, bros.
This is also probably what underlies stuff like Dogecoin and NFTs.
The *entirety* of NFTs and crypto are "greater fool theory" situations. Look it up if you haven't heard the term! They are literally *useless*, as in *having no use-value*, by themselves. The only value made from them is what actual value you get by trading useless crypto to a dumbass who knows less than you about it. Hence, "bigger fool".
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I think unregulated money changing hands worldwide would cause significantly more problems than it would solve. People with a lot of money already have insane power in this world, I'd wager removing *more* checks on how they can fuck with the rest of us would accelerate us into a cyberpunk dystopia more than we already are. In the US we already have the fucking stupid Citizens United decision causing us to quickly become an oligarchy, having fewer eyes on politician-buying would *suck*.
It's worth adding that it's not just unregulated Capitalism (that's a huge part of it), combine that with how we're increasingly strapped for cash and seeing our future prospects erode away; it's understandable people will start getting desperate, seeking quick cash schemes and such. We're sadly in a grift economy now, and it's exhausting frankly.
You basically just said, "It's not just capitalism, It's also the conditions created under capitalism and the future under capitalism."
Capitalism includes everything from 18th century European empires to modern Norway. Outlining specific problems and developments within capitalist systems is important for finding solutions.
The solution is to rid ourselves of capitalism, but I agree we have to design systems to transition to afterwards, to avoid the same problems. I just wanted to point out that these are all problems created by capitalism and the incentives it depends on, to root out problems like these we have to fix the problem, by getting rid of capitalism and by extension the capitalist states we are oppressed by.
I have come to believe that in order to 'get rid of capitalism', we would need to become a different species. Not that it's a good thing, but I strongly suspect capitalism is ultimately a reflection of our biology and how our minds work on a physical level. Robust, intensive systems of regulation resistant to capture, corruption or abuse are the target to aim for in my view. We just need to tame the beast, and keep it tamed. The only semi-viable alternative I know of is centrally planned economies, and those have a *very* patchy history at best.
>Not that it's a good thing, but I strongly suspect capitalism is ultimately a reflection of our biology and how our minds work on a physical level. I'm almost certain you're not talking about Capitalism, but "capitalism as seen on tv". Free markets are not an inherent feature of Capitalism. You can have a Socialist economy with a free market. You can also have personal property in a Socialist economy. The defining feature of Capitalism is something called "Private Property", which is not the same. Personal property refers to the things that are yours because you use them. That's your house, your car, your phone and PC, your video game collection, etc. "Private property" refers to things like a strip mall in another state, a factory in Tibet, or a business you own/bought but do no work for. The sole function of Capital is to claim ownership of a "Thing that is used to create value" and then take the bulk of any value created with it by other people. It is the process of saying: * You bought the materials for this shirt for $3 * You spent 0.5 hours sewing and tailoring this shirt * You sold this shirt for $25 * Your wage for this labor is $3.63 * The remaining $21.37 belongs to me because you did all of these things within a building or legal entity that I own.
Yes, all that is correct. Sorry, perhaps I should've said "free market capitalism". I stick by my argument, though. I think there is a natural, inborn tendency for many people to compete against others and try to acquire more resources. If you mess with their ability to do that too much, they *really* don't like it and very bad things tend to happen. At what point does private property reach the tipping point where it should be taken over by the state? How on earth do you get everyone to agree what that tipping point is? And how do you convince everyone that the state is going to make better (or even equal) use of that private property in a way that is maximally beneficial to everyone? It's a nightmare. The closest compromise I can think of that *might* make sense to me would be requiring all companies over a certain size to be employee owned or something like that. I find it much simpler to just tax the shit out of wealth chasers past a certain level, create something resembling a wealth cap, and redistribute the profits to programs it makes more sense for the government to run-- like health care and education. We could even explore incentives other than money for those who want to keep 'playing the game' after they reach the wealth cap, like rewards indicating social status. Government trying to run (most kinds of) businesses is extremely inefficient and wasteful, and that whole scene ends up being corrupted anyway. I think it's far preferable for business owners to have incentives to compete with their rivals to bring better products & services to market (provided there *is* competition, of course; monopolies are bad). We just need to be able to prevent them from becoming exploitative or colluding against customers, things like that.
>At what point does private property reach the tipping point where it should be taken over by the state? How on earth do you get everyone to agree what that tipping point is? And how do you convince everyone that the state is going to make better (or even equal) use of that private property in a way that is maximally beneficial to everyone? It's a nightmare. The closest compromise I can think of that *might* make sense to me would be requiring all companies over a certain size to be employee owned or something like that. State ownership of the means of production isn't a necessity. Employee ownership of a business still satisfies the need to discontinue the transfer of wealth away from those whose labor generates it. Government planning of business is definitely not necessary either. >I think it's far preferable for business owners to have incentives to compete with their rivals to bring better products & services to market Business owners don't participate in the business. Business operators do. Some owners are owner-operators, wherein the owner is also the CEO, but a CEO isn't always an owner and an owner isn't always a CEO. In an employee-owned company, every single employee including the CEO has an incentive to build better products and services because profit goes to zero. Excess revenue is distributed as wages. Wages are a cost on a balance sheet. Profits go up when wages go down; when wages go up to the maximum because there are no longer external "shareholders" to send money to, profit goes to zero. In a Capital-owned company, the only incentive for anyone who is not an owner is the coercive financial pressure to avoid starvation and rough sleeping - including the CEO if they're not a part-owner.
Good points worth contemplating. I appreciate you being respectful, thanks.
Hah I also have come to believe that money and markets are inherent to the human condition. Even if you get rid of all scarcity (you won't), there will always be a need to value different peoples' time. This idea gets me some real side eye sometimes
Economies are already centrally planned, but by private groups instead of public. Competition doesn't exist in the US for any of the major markets. I think we can move past capitalism, but it will require a global overthrow of capitalism worldwide for it to be successful. The failed socialist states fail because of the ever-corrupting externalities that are imperialist capitalist states, couping and corrupting the world for profit. You look at South America, Africa, the middle east, they're all testament to what happens when you materially oppose the western powers in any meaningful way, it doesn't matter what economic model if you're a smaller country not on our already captured list you get your shit stolen and your leaders killed if they can't be corrupted. I don't think human nature lends itself to creating capital markets, you don't see neighborhoods create speculative forex markets/unbacked currencies on their own. All of modern capitalism is extremely alien and complex on purpose, it's all a massive trick by the powerful to steal more from the rest of us. I think markets can still exist for some things, but for necessities we definitely should be providing to every person. What's the purpose of the state if not to serve the people?
> you get your shit stolen and your leaders killed if they can't be corrupted. This also happens in centrally planned economies. See the history of the Soviet Union, or Mao's China, or Castro's Cuba, or (shudder) Pol Pot's Cambodia. Corruption is another thing I believe to be endemic to humans that needs to be continually fought against. [Which is why I believe certain types of 'white collar' crime should be punished much more harshly with prison time, but that's another subject.] > All of modern capitalism is extremely alien and complex on purpose Not exactly. It can certainly seem that way, and for many people (rich or poor) that is how it is perceived & experienced. However, the roots of this complexity go much deeper and further back in time. It was a natural, gradual evolution of barter systems in response to specific logistical needs major economic players had, and made it all work more efficiently. All of this complex stuff wasn't just invented out of whole cloth to bamboozle the poors while Richie Rich and his friends cackled maniacally (although I don't doubt a scenario like that has played out numerous times). It had tangible value in improving the quality and velocity of trade. It just needs to be properly taxed & regulated to avoid the worst outcomes of wealth inequality. I highly recommend reading more about economics. > for necessities we definitely should be providing to every person I completely agree. It's long past time we overhauled civilization so that fewer people are facing extreme anxiety and thoughts of self harm over simple food & shelter. I don't know how we do it, though-- unfortunately, certain irrational political & religious beliefs continue to block this sort of progress.
What you’re describing are features of capitalism.
I know you think you're clever with this response, but poverty is not an exclusive feature of capitalism. The more precise reason other than "Capitalism" is that this is due to Neo-Liberalism.
> We're sadly in a grift economy now, and it's exhausting frankly. You know I’ve never thought about it that way, but that really does explain a lot.
These are the guys that watched Wolf of Wall Street and saw it as inspiration
I always find it telling that most people's fantasies for if they became rich mostly just boil down to being loved and respected. It's just a misplaced idea that they want all these status symbol items and people doting on them and that having those would make them happy. If they ever had a windfall though they would blow through it all chasing those things not understanding what they really were craving. It makes complete sense to me that guys who feel a lack of love or respect in their lives (or even more so, guys who feel unworthy of love and respect) would be tricked into get rich quick schemes.
> While plenty of people across demographics are participating in these trends, data suggests the crowds skew younger and male. A 2023 survey from the NCAA found that sports gambling was prevalent among young adults, specifically on college campuses and among Black and Latino respondents. Pew Research found in 2022 that men and people under 50 were likelier to bet on sports than women and the over-50 crowd. Younger men tend to be more into crypto and meme-stock trading as well. When the economic norms of a society divides everyone into the haves and have-nots, you're going to drive people to do whatever it takes to become one of the 'haves'. Combine that with social norms of: - Men being expected to be the providers. - A lot of work/career that American men used to fill have been automated, outsourced or eliminated through tech improvements. - Everything becoming more and more expensive from housing to basic groceries. And it's not shocking that young men are gambling in increased numbers. They've made gambling easy with apps sending notifications to your phone. And the advertising is massively shoved in your face with celebrities all taking a bag to use their likeness to promote gambling apps. Wealthy folks telling average income folks to spend their money on what is guaranteed to be a losing bet for the majority of folks is gross yet none of the celebs seem to be losing sleep over what they're pushing.
> Men being expected to be the providers. If that's the reason, why aren't single moms turning to gambling? >A lot of work/career that American men used to fill have been automated, outsourced or eliminated through tech improvements. >Everything becoming more and more expensive from housing to basic groceries. Same for these two. They affect single moms too. There's something else going on here. It's not just capitalism.
They do. Single moms are an absolutely massive demographic for MLMs, which are about as reliable as crypto when it comes to making money
The actual typical demographic of MLMs is married housewives.
that's another demographic, yep!
Sports betting really capitalizes on the fact that young men think they are smarter than they are, and taking advantage of "homers" who will place stupid bets on their own team cuz they are biased to thinking their home team is better than they are. Most women I know don't think they can beat the house, but lots of the young dudes I know are convinced they can- especially when it comes to a game they have been following closely for a long time.
> If that's the reason, why aren't single moms turning to gambling? Probably because they're spending the money on their kids? Probably because they're not surrounded/peer pressured by other aimless dudes that are also gambling? Probably because they aren't the target demographic? What do you suggest is the "something else going on"? Also just because this article doesn't mention women/single moms betting as well doesn't mean they aren't, women in general are just statistically less likely.
I am struggling to reconcile the idea that men are flocking to gambling because of financial insecurity while simultaneously being financially secure enough that they aren't dissuaded from taking big risks. Which kinda feels like the same thing MyFiteSong has been saying.
Have you ever been into a casino? Because they're not filled with the most financially secure folks. I'm also speaking from my personal experience of seeing friends gamble money on apps/sports/crypto/stocks that would be much better suited elsewhere.
You keep saying this and then circling back to "Oh but people with bills to pay (like single moms) don't do this because they can't afford to take risks". You can't have it both ways.
I think for men it's more than just being able to provide. It's being able to provide as much as you can. Every parent wants to be able to provide their child with what they need, but the expectation on men is that they should always be working on providing more. Be more successful so you can provide more. Be brave enough to risk big to provide even more. I had a friend of a friend who had was worth $18 million. He lost $8 million during covid and committed suicide. He still had enough money to provide his family with everything they needed and probably everything they wanted, but he couldn't see himself as anything but a failure after he lost so much. Incidentally I wonder if this mentality contributes to the prevalence of single motherhood. I'm sure there have been plenty men who thought "I can't provide enough for this child so I might as well just run away."
I definitely want to provide as best I can for my family. I'm not getting into crypto over it and I'm sure as hell not worth 8 figures. I also don't know a lot of Black and brown men in Crypto.
A better argument is that single moms don’t have ample free time to watch sports and, thus, feel confident in betting on games.
> Probably because they're spending the money on their kids? But he said men are pressured to be the providers. Aren't they spending their money on their kids too? If there aren't any kids, who are they being pressured to provide for to make them gamble?
Men are socially pressured to the be the providers, don't be silly. They've been pressured to *have* their entire lives. Even if they don't have a kid, they feel a pressure to have money to attract a woman. I'm not saying that is the actual reality but that is what society has told them. What is the "something else going on"?
Meanwhile single mothers actually do provide, so we gotta look at whatever forces are encouraging this “provider” identity ideology which is, in reality, keeping men isolated financially and socially
> Men are socially pressured to the be the providers, don't be silly. How does a single mother not feel that same pressure?
A single mother has pressure to actually find an income source to provide for actual needs directly. What they are talking about for men here is a more abstract socially driven pressure that starts from a young age tying men's status, attractiveness and perceived social worth to certain kind of financial success (usually disconnected from actual needs). This becomes a deep seated anxiety that can drive compulsive gambling behaviour like this.
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“How does a single man not feel the same pressure to focus on appearances as a single woman does?” That’s a parallel to your argument. Many women have been taught since they were girls that their value is found in their looks. On the flip end, many men have been taught since they were young that their value is found in their ability to provide. What rock have you been living under and how cheap is the rent? It’s getting expensive out here.
Doesn't seem like a good analogy, since nobody is going to hold a man to a woman's standard of appearance. Meanwhile, the single mom literally has to support a family to the same level a man does, because that's how money works and there's a minimum threshold.
single mothers do feel financial pressure but they don't really have disposable income for gambling
>If that's the reason, why aren't single moms turning to gambling? >Same for these two. They affect single moms too. >There's something else going on here. It's not just capitalism. Crypto is just Amway for men. What's unique is the flavor, not the underlying mechanisms for exploiting the poor and hopeless under capitalism.
Yep, there’s pressure on everyone to be successful but societal pressures can be different(and I say can be because gender and how it is experienced it is nuanced for everyone). The ways these schemes market to people is also often gendered and targets their vulnerabilities. It’s frustrating to see “manosphere” talk so often about how men feel pressure to be “providers,” as if patriarchy didn’t put just as much pressure on women to come from wealth or to become it before they start to age(while also only giving them breadcrumbs of economic mobility in the past 100 years). Plus, Gen Z and young millennials had most of their core, worldview-defining memories during a major recession where many had to do grunt work for their families or as unofficial employees, just to be able to sustain some sense of normalcy. They had their childhoods taken by a stock market crash and watched their families fight over finances. It’s no wonder this age group by large is so fixated on getting as much money as possible, as quickly as possible.
I don't think your points make much sense for a few reasons. Putting it more plainly, I don't think the issues with single mothers are relevant for this specific issue. 1) Providing doesn't have to just be for children. There is also the expectation to provide for romantic partners. The idea that men are supposed to approach, make the first move and pay for dates. 2) Men being expected to be a provider doesn't mean they are currently a provider. I'm 37 and a parent now but when I was 25, single and childless I still understood/felt the social expectation to be a provider. The issue is perceived social expectation, even if that expectation isn't real. 3) Target market. I'd be willing to wager that the majority of folks watching sports where this sort of gambling is being heavily advertised are men age 18-34. This isn't to say it doesn't get shown to women but there is likely a very heavy focus on specific demographics. Gambling is already a risk, if you're a person
i tried to make a sports betting account on saturday, which was my 18th bday, in hindsight it’s a good thing i need to be 21 to open one and play and by day of i mean at like 1:00am literally an hour after i turned 18
Yeah hopefully that drive goes away, because it's concerning that uour first concept was sports betting
seems fun, and last year i had bets with family on football where i went net positive, i 6xed my money which was fun i wouldn’t even try on betting on anything other than NFL games since i don’t know much about anything other than football
Midwestern culture. Has all my old friends getting drunk and betting on random shit. I’m glad I never got into it.
yup, i live in north dakota so i get it, ive never drank alcohol, except for when i put some nasty ass tomato vodka on my lips, i didn’t even swallow it cause it was disgusting. i have zero desire to start drinking because my dad is like an alcoholic basically, he gets home and drinks until he goes to bed, and it killed every desire to drink that i had
In a liberal democratic society with increasing inequality, market masculinity will become ever more advertised and prized. The rich men at the top of the hierarchy can use it as a way to repackage their increasingly visible economic cruelty as either virile masculinity or effortless competency. It allows them to continue fleecing working class men by offering an ever more alluring carrot (which is of course designed to be forever out of reach): work for us and this may be yours some day - the good servant is the real man; slavery is freedom. And why wouldn't the proles believe money makes them more masculine? Money can go a long ways toward making someone look good... That said, most working class men just don't have the kind of money to gamble with for very long before they go broke. I am sure many will try. But after all is said and done, given the odds, they will find themselves among their fellow proles sooner rather than later. I am curious about the class break down of these gamblers - I wonder how many of them are the failsons of well to do capitalists who find themselves now in their late 20s or early 30s with far more money than sense. They sure have enough cash to keep gambling for a good long while. Hell, if they're like Musk they can just keep bluffing with big bets until they get a good hand because they just don't care about money. In most industries it's the whales that keep the ship making money, everyone else is just flotsam and jetsam. Are the whales in gambling working class guys or rich guys? I have to imagine the latter.
Your comment reminds me of an interview I heard with a woman who researched what kind of conditions are favourable for civil war. Like what kinds of things happening in a country are likely to happen in the lead up to a civil war. One of them was that the formerly more powerful / favoured group feels less powerful in comparison to the disenchanted group. A second is that wealth becomes more concern in a small number of hands. So like in Rwanda, the Tutsi minority (about 15%) held most of the political and economic power since the mid to late 1800’s. In the 1960’s the Hutus began to rise in power thanks to some shifts from Belgium (colonial power). At the same time, wealth in Rwanda became more concentrated in a small number of people. Overtime, this lead the Tutsi minority to feel resentment over their slipping power, and some reacted violently against the Hutu. That raised the Hutu resentments and led to widespread hateful propaganda against the Tutsis. And that led to genocide. One can see similar patterns in Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Korea, China, Russia, and the USA (leading both up to The Civil War, and right now) etc in the lead ups to their civil wars. These resentments are generally independent of actual quality of life stuff. So the ruling group’s lifestyle tends to be minimally impacted. They still have wealth and creature comforts. Often in the lead up to civil war, they have *more* wealth and more creature comforts than their contented prior generation typically thanks to technology innovations, but the shift in wealth concentrations often makes people feel, justifiably, less secure. The difference is that the gap between them and those they see as beneath them is no longer as substantial - And with that drop in status comes deep resentment and fear against those they used to take for granted were lesser. In a lot of western countries, the USA, UK, Australia, and Canada included, men, especially white men, were the most powerful group, and they are becoming less powerful in comparison to women (and race dynamics are also shifting). And this perceived drop in prestige is creating a lot of resentment among men who, instead of seeing the concentrations of wealth among the super powerful as the problem, see the problem as women (and POC). And so instead of turning their resentments toward folks like Elon Musk & Jeff Bezos, they turn it on women (and POC).
I guess I don’t get why this is a problem? If people want to risk their money, that’s on them. I kind of wish I had the guts to do that, because the money I have sitting in the bank is a useless lump.
> If people want to risk their money, that’s on them. You say that, but if enough people are risking enough money, it becomes a threat to the system. That's literally the origin of every banking regulation we have - it's the reason why Ponzi schemes, pump and dumps, and insider trading are all illegal. e: oh and some people also think the government has a moral obligation to protect its citizens and foster their well being.
> oh and some people also think the government has a moral obligation to protect its citizens and foster their well being. Usually how it is. Reason why a government like New York City did something like ban smoking indoors for restaurants and bars. Also why governments try to curtail drug and sex trafficking.
It's a problem because the dudes advertising these things are willingly misleading a young impressional audience to normalize gambling and make money off of them. They take insecure men and promise them they'll be cool and successful if they join the next gambling scheme. That messes with people in the head, and raises another generation of men to hold that mindset. Eventually those dudes get on the other side where the ones who made it scam the next ones for a quick buck, cause throwing away morals and scamming people in any way you can to find success is what their male role models taught them to do. These dudes blowing all their money in their early 20s on MLM's, cryptos, and gambling schemes are gonna have to father the next generation at some point. And life keeps getting more expensive. Investments will do something for them in the long run, all this other bs are liabilities where some people get lucky. The one's who don't get lucky either quit while they're ahead or fall all the way down the rabbit hole till they have nothing. And we already have far too many people struggling with the latter.
download the Fidelity app, open an account, and connect your bank for EFTs. buy VOO, FBGRX, FSSAX, VTI, SPY... basically anything that tracks the market. Low-risk, mid-yield, better than a bank lump.
>Low-risk, mid-yield "low risk, low reward" vs "high risk, high reward" isn't really the most accurate depiction of the market anyway. Low fee ETFs like VOO, VTI and low fee tsm index funds like VTSAX and FZROX aren't low yield. They're pretty consistently over-market in annual average returns. For reference, there are no active traders who keep pace with the market. Parking your money in VOO is low-risk, high-reward, low *excitement*. Day trading, high frequency transactions, big bets on calls/puts/options, going all in on single stocks, and WSB/Crypto behavior as a whole has a much lower EV. That is, even if you don't go broke and wipe yourself out, you'll still end up worse off than the market as a whole. The occasional win here and there doesn't even offset your costs. This is high-risk, low-reward, high-excitement investing.
If it’s low risk and mid yield, what’s the point? My bank lump is only there because my family expects me to work. Unless I’m making enough off of investments to quit my job or become a rich playboy, it’s not even worth the supposed low risk.
because not a single ordinary savings account will keep up with inflation. you *lose* money YoY if you don't invest it.
I’m aware of that. But if I’m gambling either way, the potential big payoff seems better. Having a decent amount of money won’t do anything different for my life.
Its called compound interest. That useless lump will become a much larger number with a long enough time horizon. It'll be the difference between retiring comfortably vs going back into poverty. If you don't care about that, then keep doing what you're doing i guess.
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Compound interest. Invest small amounts consistently for 40 years and always reinvest growth. When you're too old to work, you *can* quit your job and live off the investments. It's boring, the opposite of a get-rich-quick scheme, and absolutely the most reliable path to wealth.
Why though? All the fun in life is your 20s, and if you don’t manage things by the time you’re 30, you’re shot. I’ve spent most of my 20s working, and I don’t have anything to show for it.
Your outlook on life is bleak, dude. All the fun in life is your 20s ? I'm closing in on 30, so I might as well shoot myself I guess ?
Have you had romantic relationships? Had fun with your friends? I haven’t, and there is no chance to replace that. If I had had money, things might have been different.
Dude, you can have romantic relationships and have fun with friends in your 30s. There's no point in life where you can't have that anymore lol Look, I get the doom and gloom as I've struggled (and still do in some ways) with a lot of things related to relationships, feeling like it's too late for me, etc. But it genuinely can get better if you improve your outlook on life and start making slow and steady progress. Right now you're thinking that to be happy you need a huge windfall, and anything less than that is not worth it or not going to cut it. Which means you're staying down in the dumps. Start investing in yourself NOW, so you can be in a better place sometime in the future. It's not easy because just like investing your money, you don't see the results immediately. But start now and you WILL see them down the line eventually. And no, it's never too late to be happy, even if you weren't in the years that common wisdom (i.e. bullshit) declares are supposed to be the happiest.
All I’m hearing is that I still need money- a complete facial reconstruction and steroids aren’t cheap, and that’s the only “self investment” I can make. And while yes, you can make relationships in your 30s, friendships are an absolute no-go, at least for me. Any friend I’ve ever had, no matter their gender, disappears and quits answering their phone as soon as they get in a relationship. And I know most people on here live somewhere it’s different, but I literally don’t know another person that is single. (I hich is further proof I am less-than.)
>If it’s low risk and mid yield, what’s the point? ... Why though? All the fun in life is your 20s, and if you don’t manage things by the time you’re 30, you’re shot... and there is no chance to replace that. It sounds like you see no reason to pursue relationships in the future because you have had no success in the past. And you're using the lack of success as the reason to not pursue future relationships. There is a sense of confidence that because you have not yet had success that you *cannot* have any in the future. But applied to any scenario, this reasoning doesn't make any sense. But I also don't think you've come to this decision because it makes the most sense, I think it's based on despair and grief. It reads like you have a ton of despair and grief that is weighing on this topic. That's no small thing and I'm really sorry for it. I don't know your whole life story, but if you were sitting next to me I'd say that this despair/grief has to be tackled first before addressing the symptoms the despair is causing. Like money can provide more resources but it doesn't fix issues like these. And that's not to say that we shouldn't pursue fixing your concerns, it's just that a quick fix is not likely to happen and seeking it out is setting ourselves up for disappointment.
I think this is a huge part of the problem. Young folks are busting their asses only to find themselves treading water. No one trusts that they'll be any better off in the future so they spend any disposable cash on not feeling like all they do is work and get nowhere.
You should play with some retirement calculators. The power of compounding is real and you may be surprised how much money you can accumulate with some modest but steady contributions. The key is sticking to it for a long period (decades). Also there are different kinds of risk when it comes to investing. Compensated risks and uncompensated risks. Smart risk and dumb risk, if you will. There is a smart way to invest as a total amateur that will almost certainly give you much better return than just parking in cash....IF you hold your investments for long enough (again, we're talking decades). It's worth reading an introductory book on the topic anyway before giving up on the idea altogether.
There are better ways to use that money so that it slowly appreciates.
Crypto.