The house always wins

At 1 you get a tablet to stop the crying.

At 8 you see things you can never unsee.

At 13 you wake up every morning and the first thing you do is compare your entire existence to someone else's highlight reel.

At 18 you're at your first job staring at a screen, scrolling through nothing, waiting for something that never comes. You try to read a paragraph and your brain taps out after two sentences.

Nobody did this to you.

You did it willingly. Every single day.

That's the genius of it.

A casino doesn't drag you through the door. It builds the door where you're already walking. It makes the lights warm and the sounds exciting and the wins just frequent enough that you stay. You always stay.

The house doesn't need to force you.

It just needs to be there when you're bored. When you're lonely. When you're 1 year old and crying and your exhausted parent needs five minutes of silence.

That's all it takes.

You'll come back on your own.

You always do.

The slot machine doesn't care if you win sometimes. It was never built for that. It was built for the long game. Your attention today. Your kid's attention tomorrow. Their kid's attention after that.

The house always wins.

The only question is whether you know you're gambling.