What if it were proposed that online sports gambling is bad for sportsmanship and bad for competition?      
 
It's not a legalistic argument.  The laws might've opened the door, but for most of us without legal expertise, the laws are not the issue.      
 
It's not a moralistic or a puritanical argument.  Addiction and debt are real, but gambling itself is not the problem, nor is it new.      
 
Most importantly, the argument that online sports gambling is harmful is not an argument that online sports gambling is the most harmful or the most widespread form of addiction.  Uncomfortable though it may be, Americans have shown to average 7+ hours daily with social media and 4+ added hours with screens generally.  One might argue that this could exceed the hours that any screens are needed for business, emergencies, or keeping in touch with family and friends.  Addiction to these screens, instead, is the vast, "hidden in plain sight" addiction that has isolated and torn our society apart in ways that sports gambling can't even if the makers of their websites tried.  And it's this bigger addiction to screens that has turbocharged online sports gambling.     
 
The historian Timothy Snyder explains that the basis of our algorithms is the behaviorist experiments that were done with pigeons and rats in the 20th Century.  The pigeons and rats were given a lever that sometimes contained food and sometimes did not.  What the scientists conducting the experiment found was that the pigeons and rats kept returning to the lever, not understanding the experiment being done to them.  This is social media, which uses the data from our behavior to hook us, by giving us first what we like and then what we fear.  This is the basis of modern advertising, which alternates between seduction and violence, as well as comfort and shock.  And obviously it is the basis of gambling, where the house always wins, but the customer returns for the rare lever that rewards.      
 
But it's more than just the design model:  it's the conditions.  Snyder highlights five ways we are hooked by algorithms and screens.  "Experimental loneliness ... Intermittent reinforcement ... Confirmation bias ... Social conformity ... [and] Cognitive dissonance."  Intermittent reinforcement:  we already explained.  Experimental loneliness is the fact that with the phone, you can gamble from anywhere, at any time, for anything, at any point in the game, without anyone to discourage you.  Confirmation bias is watching sports regularly and forgetting how these gambling websites have intruded, how they are being pushed, and how they were not pushed until relatively recently.  Social conformity is the gambling websites' and sports' leagues ads portraying gambling in a way that's just fun with your friends, just part of being a fan.  And cognitive dissonance is the knowledge that gambling is risky, that you probably can't afford that bet, but screw it, it's fun, everyone's doing it, and heck, you might get rich.      

So again, it is not just the fact that online sports gambling is legal.  It is that college and professional sports leagues have partnered with online sports gambling websites, plastered their jerseys and arenas with their brands, and made deals with the gambling websites that profit the leagues by encouraging fans to separate themselves from their hard-earned money.  When the business model is not just the leagues making money, but tricking fans into thinking that sports can make the fans money even when they do not, the main interest in sports isn't even the tribal appeal of rooting for a team anymore.  It's the nihilistic pursuit of fake money.      

It doesn't breed fans of the team or fans of the game.  It shatters both parts of the "it's not who wins or loses, it's how you play the game."  It's neither.  The sport has been made incidental.  The gambling is the game.  And there are no rules except you give the gambling websites their money.      
 
The gambler thinks they're on offense, but the house guarantees they are on defense.  For the leagues and the fans, it's a strictly financial affair, in a way that makes overpriced luxury boxes seem an exemplar of sportsmanship by comparison.      
 
But "when we see how [these conditions] work, we can escape [their] predictification.  That will require changing the internet, but it will also require doing other things with our bodies than staring at screens.  It is our move." (Excerpts from Timothy Snyder, 101 to 108, On Freedom, 2024.)

I hope you enjoyed this look at self-esteem over the past few weeks.  Before we wrap it up, I want to credit Alfie Cohn's book "No Contest" as the inspiration and source for much of this information.  I'm sure I will continue to quote the book in future posts!

Winning has the potential to be an addiction.  If we look to an alcoholic drink as something we need for a way to relax, or if we look to a snort of cocaine for a quick high, we can do the same thing when we look to winning as a way to feel good about ourselves.

The addiction to winning is probably most similar to the addiction to gambling.  When we gamble, we never want to quit while we are ahead, nor do we ever think we can't win our money back when we lose.  As our winnings increase, we keep rolling the dice.  When we are down a significant amount, we think we are going to get on a role with the next hand of cards.

The same thing goes with winning.  After we win, we want to win more.  If we win a championship, we want to repeat, and we never want to walk away.  If we lose, we get back out there to prove ourselves because we never give up.  The cycle doesn't end.

Further, the more we reward being "number one," the more we contribute to the addiction of competition.

The problem continues when the pleasure from winning wears off faster and faster.  We compete again and again searching for that thrill, only to be disappointed when we don't get it from another victory.  We compare each championship to other championships and wonder why we are not as enthralled after gold medal.

The funny thing is that this phenomenon can happen in so many other places in life.  I can remember walking out of a movie that absolutely blew me away to the point of obsession that the sequel was a disappointment because it didn't do the same thing to me that the first movie did.  Is it fair to compare them that way?  How can one movie compete with its own sequel?

Competition is a funny thing.  Self-esteem should just be happy.