The Work of Dystopia
The bleak future of 24/7 online gambling, creator-"controlled" porn, and microfinance built into all transactions is almost upon us (and I'm here for it)
A young person lies awake at night, face aglow from the smartphone’s screen. In the near-future America, millions share this nightly ritual — endlessly scrolling, wagering, and indulging in digital vice, their Phone Hand (PH) and Goon Hand (GH) trapped in a loop of cheap dopamine hits.
It’s the late 2020s, and the American Dream has splintered into two realities. In one, the affluent glide above the fray, paying for things in full and treating online pornography, sports betting, and buy-now-pay-later debt as casual diversions. In the other reality, countless young men are tethered to these digital addictions for both income and escape — betting on games to cover next month’s rent, flipping through endless explicit content for comfort, and financing all the basics through microloans that never quite go away. What were once guilty pleasures have become economic lifelines for some and relentless profit engines for others. Nearly half of men under 50 now have an active online sportsbook account, and over two-thirds of young men consume online porn regularly. In this dystopia, vice isn’t a sideshow — it’s the main event.
This fun little essay looks back on how we got here — tracing the sociotechnical shifts that normalized these vices and examining their consequences. It follows one composite character as a case study in digital dependence, contrasting his app-governed GH and PH life with the detached ease of the wealthy. As always, my tone may be satirical, but the reality is painfully real. Is there any escape from this cycle of “bet, click, and owe?” Survey says: NOPE. Let’s dig in.
Origins: How Vice Became a Way of Life
For centuries, gambling, pornography, and usurious lending occupied the fringes of society — morally policed and relatively isolated, common only in well-cordoned rabbit warrens of iniquity that could be periodically eradicated like Sodom and Gomorrah whenever some political hack’s latest purity crusade kicked off. How did they infiltrate every pocket and bedroom? The transformation was gradual and multi-faceted. Key developments in the 2010s and 2020s paved the way for today’s all-consuming vice ecosystem:
Always-On Connectivity: The spread of broadband, smartphones, and social media created a fertile medium for instant gratification. By the mid-2010s, high-speed internet put 24/7 casinos and infinite explicit videos in everyone’s pocket. The iPhone generation grew up with on-demand desire as a given. Apps and platforms were engineered to maximize “engagement,” exploiting psychological reward cycles (likes, notifications, recommendations). In retrospect, this was the invisible ignition of the dopamine economy — an infrastructure that made this craveable content as accessible as oxygen, addiction by design.
Legalization and Corporate Blitz: A few legal and corporate decisions supercharged the vice industries. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on sports betting, unleashing a state-by-state gold rush. Sports gambling, once relegated to Las Vegas bookies, went mainstream overnight. By the early 2020s, watching a ballgame became an exercise in advertisement endurance — “sitting through one long gambling commercial, with occasional flashes of the actual game.” Betting companies spent over $1 billion a year on aggressive ads from 2021–2023, luring young men with phrases like “no-sweat parlay” and “risk-free bet” on every screen. Simultaneously, fintech startups flooded the market with “easy” credit. Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) options like Afterpay and Klarna popped up at every online checkout, seducing consumers with zero-interest installment plans. By 2022, nearly 43% of Americans had used BNPL services, up from 31% the year before. Silicon Valley and Wall Street alike know that there is serious money in deferred pain.
Economic Pressure and Inequality: These digital temptations might have remained mere novelties if not for the economic undercurrents pulling people toward them. Stagnant wages, rising costs, and the gutting of stable employment in the 21st century left many young adults financially insecure. Nearly 73% of millennials (ages 27–42) were living paycheck to paycheck by 2023. With homeownership and savings out of reach for so many, get-rich-quick fantasies and buy-now-pay-later fixes found a captive audience. Sports betting dangled the hope (however false) of a life-changing win on Sunday’s game; online porn offered free pleasure in a lonely, workless evening; BNPL promised you could have nice things today even if you’re broke. In a society of massive inequality, these apps became the pressure valves for a generation on the edge — or perhaps the opiates that kept discontent at bay.
Cultural Desensitization: Social attitudes shifted notably in the 2010s. Activities once stigmatized as seedy or irresponsible were reframed as normal hobbies. The taboo around pornography eroded as it became ubiquitous online and even empowering for some creators. OnlyFans, launched in 2016, boomed during the 2020 pandemic, turning tens of thousands of young people into cash-on-the-barrelhead (minus the host’s cut, of course!) amateur porn producers and blurring the line between influencer culture and sex work. Likewise, televised poker and daily fantasy sports (marketed as “skill games”1) helped legitimize gambling. By the time major sports leagues inked partnerships with betting apps, having a flutter on the game felt as ordinary as fantasy football. Even personal debt lost its stigma; taking out micro-loans or splitting payments became an ordinary way to navigate life’s expenses. In this cultural miasma, resistance to vice understandably eroded. We humanzees were primed to accept vice economies as just another part of the modern lifestyle.
Each of these factors fed into the next. The result was an America where digital vice merged with daily life, presented not as deadly sins but as the services and entertainment that help us pass each long, pointless day’s journey into night. By the late 2020s, a perfect storm had formed: technological ubiquity, legal openness, economic stress, and cultural acceptance. The stage was set for addiction and dependency on an unprecedented scale.
Life Under the Algorithm: Trapped in the Loop
To understand the human impact, consider Jake, a 27-year-old living in this near-future landscape. Jake could be any of millions of young men caught in the GH and PH feedback loops of our three forces — porn, betting, and microfinance. His life is a case study in what happens when survival itself becomes gamified.
Morning: Jake’s day begins with a cacophony of app notifications. Before he’s even out of bed, his phone buzzes with a reminder from a buy-now-pay-later app: his payment for last month’s grocery order is due today. Money is tight (as always), so he swipes it aside for later. Next, a sports betting app pushes a personalized alert — “Boosted odds on tonight’s Lakers game! Bet $50, win $200!” It’s basically an alarm clock in the form of a temptation. As he finally rises, bleary-eyed, he absentmindedly opens a porn site out of habit, scrolling through videos in search of a mild dopamine jolt to jump-start his mood as he idly rubs his crotch with his GH. This is Jake’s version of a morning coffee. The algorithm has learned what he likes, serving up increasingly extreme content to keep his attention. Minutes turn into an hour; he’s late to start work, but it hardly matters since he works for these very platforms.
Daytime: Jake’s income is piecemeal and precarious. In this economy, few stable jobs remain outside the vice sector — so Jake has stitched together gigs within it. He spends part of his day as a content moderator for an adult streaming site, ironically getting paid to review and tag the same kind of material he consumes. It’s grim work (imagine flagging disturbing videos for $15 an hour), but it’s remote and it’s something. When that shift ends, he pivots to what he considers his “real hustle”: sports betting. Jake treats betting like a day-trader treats their stonks. Multiple screens glow with statistics, betting lines, and live odds for games in sports he’s never watched even a second of, from sumo to thappad kabaddi. This is not mere recreation for him; it’s a desperate attempt to make money. Young men like Jake overwhelmingly believe they can profit from gambling — they say it’s “fun, exciting, and stimulating,” and most think they have an edge. Jake has had a few small wins, enough to keep the dream alive. But more often, he ends up chasing losses, doubling down on new bets to recoup past ones — a common spiral that entraps 52% of online bettors admit. Last week, after a bad streak, he emptied his now-overdrawn checking account to cover a string of losing bets. He’s part of the 20% of bettors who wind up unable to meet financial obligations due to gambling losses. Yet here he is again, convinced one big score will fix everything.
By afternoon, the adrenaline of gambling morphs into anxiety. Jake checks his BNPL balance: he has staggered payments due for his smartphone, his laptop, several of his monthly streaming services (i.e., he has monthly payments on his monthly payments) and even the mattress he’s sleeping on — a Bayeux Tapestry of micro-debts. The apps make it look so easy: “Split your purchase into 4 easy payments.” But “easy” fades when you have a dozen such plans overlapping. He’s not alone in this juggling act; more than half of millennials use BNPL services, and 50% say it’s specifically to stretch their cash flow and make ends meet. It’s essentially a new form of payday loan, rebranded with pastel-colored apps. For Jake, every paycheck (and gambling win, if any) is already spoken for by previous purchases. Like 9 out of 10 gambling app users, he has never withdrawn any winnings from his account. Today’s debt is tomorrow’s torment. The future eats the present; Saturn devours his son.
Evening: After a meager dinner (put on a credit card, which itself will later be paid in installments — still more debt to pay debt), Jake unwinds in the only ways he knows how. He oscillates between a porn site and a sports streaming app, often using both simultaneously in a numb, disassociated haze as his GH and PH work their wonders. The porn provides a brief escape from his stress — a few minutes of illusionary pleasure — but in the aftermath he often feels hollow.2 In truth, the more porn Jake consumes, the less satisfaction it brings; studies show heavy pornography use correlates with higher depression, stress, and loneliness. Jake would agree. Still, logging off leaves him alone with his thoughts, which is worse. So he stays online, clicking through cam girl rooms and OnlyFans pages, tipping a few dollars here and there (small transactions that add up) just to feel some connection. Occasionally, in a bid to improve his lot, Jake has tried to monetize this part of his life too: he’s flirted with starting his own adult content stream and even posted a few explicit videos of his depressingly3 average endowment for pay to titillate other men who might want to work their GHs to images of his wares. But as a relatively anonymous guy without a niche, he earned in a month what a top female creator makes in seconds. It was hardly worth the humiliation, but he still kept doing it, perhaps for the same reason a dog chases its tail. The gig economy of sex work is just as winner-take-all as any other platform.
Before bed, one more ritual: checking the outcomes of his bets. Tonight, like most nights, the results compound his woes. He lost the boosted odds wager (those promos tend to entice people into low-probability bets by design). His four-leg NBA parlay busted on the final leg. He feels a rush of shame and self-loathing — a feeling 37% of online bettors know well after a loss. To soothe himself, he opens an especially creepy AI porn video in one tab while opening the betting app in another, browsing tomorrow’s rugby and snooker lines as the explicit video plays in the background. This cycle — arousal, risk, reward, despair — has no clear end. It’s nearly 2 a.m. when Jake finally collapses into sleep, his brain still buzzing. Tomorrow, it begins again. In a sense, Jake is both customer and product: wrung dry by the apps that run his life and animate his GH and PH, sustained only by the hope they intermittently provide.
Jake’s story might sound extreme, but it’s a composite drawn from real trends. He stands in for a whole demographic of young men living under what we might call algorithmic serfdom — beholden to digital landlords that charge rent in dopamine and dollars. For Jake, there is no boundary between work and play, between necessity and addiction. Everything is an app; everything is a hustle; every second of his existence involves either scamming or being scammed, always to his detriment. His worldview is shaped by the metrics and stimuli of the platforms. A win is when his account balance ticks up or his video gets a like; a loss is a negative number or a lonely night. It’s life as a casino, a porn studio, and a payday loan office all at once.
The Two Americas: Addicted and Insulated
While Jake and those like him are stuck on the hamster wheel of digital vice, there’s another class of Americans largely insulated from this plight. The rich and upper-middle class still inhabit the same technological world — they have the same iPhones and apps — but the context is entirely different. For them, porn, gambling, and microcredit are optional gentlemanly amusements,4 not survival tools. This class divide has turned vice into a strangely stratified phenomenon: ubiquitous yet experienced in starkly unequal ways.
Consider how a wealthy individual interacts with these three forces. A well-off professional might place a few bets during March Madness or the Super Bowl, for the thrill of it. If they lose a few hundred dollars, it’s no crisis — it’s equivalent to a bar tab, a story to tell at the country club. In fact, surveys have found that those making over $150k per year are among the most likely to have placed a sports bet recently (perhaps because they have money to burn). But crucially, they aren’t betting need money. It’s discretionary, and most can stop at any time without consequence. There’s a world of difference between playing and grinding. Jake grinds; the wealthy play.
The same pattern holds for pornography. A man from an upper-middle-class background might also indulge in online adult content — porn doesn’t discriminate by income in its availability. But it tends to be a private pastime, compartmentalized and often kept within “reasonable” limits. He has other outlets in life — a stable relationship that is useful for companionship and keeping up appearances, or opportunities for real-world leisure, like an invite to a Dubai yacht filled with various mid- and top-tier OnlyFans models — so porn remains a supplement, not a substitute for human connection. If it ever became a severe problem, he, like all the other Anthony Weiners of the world, likely has access to resources (therapy, time off work, social support) to address it. For Jake, who lacks those buffers, porn is the sex life, the friend, the therapist, all in one, which makes it far harder to moderate.
Then there’s debt. Perhaps the most glaring gap is here. The affluent simply don’t live under the usurious terms that Jake does. They swipe their platinum credit card and pay it in full each month, accruing rewards points instead of interest. Or they use BNPL services strategically — maybe taking an installment plan on a big Peloton bike purchase not because they can’t afford it, but because why not use free financing? (Indeed, older and wealthier consumers report using BNPL mostly for convenience or to take advantage of no-interest plans.) They are playing the game from the top of the deck. Meanwhile, half of BNPL borrowers are using it to simply manage cash flow and cover basic expenses, often juggling multiple plans to avoid overdraft. When a late payment occurs, a rich user shrugs it off; a poor user gets hit with fees and credit dings that pull them deeper down. It’s a subtler form of what has always been true: the rich get cheaper money. In our era, they also get cheaper dopamine.
Society at large often fails to distinguish these two experiences. The glossy marketing of vice tech — the cheerful ads for betting apps, the empowering language of sex-work platforms, the trendy fintech branding of BNPL — assumes a user with agency and means. The idealized user is a cosmopolitan millennial who chooses to indulge: betting $10 here, watching some cool sex-positive porn there, splitting a payment for convenience. And yes, such users exist. But they are not the ones driving the volumes or feeling the pain. The real profits come from the Jakes of the world, who have no choice but to engage heavily. It’s reminiscent of how casinos rely on a small percentage of problem gamblers for the bulk of their revenue, or how credit card companies profit most from those who carry balances. The house always wins, and the house prefers customers who can’t stop.
It’s telling that many of the companies enabling these addictions are owned or funded by the elite. The billionaire class can bankroll an explosion of online betting (or an adult content empire or a lending startup), extract wealth from the masses, and then themselves remain largely untouched by the social fallout — at least until we reach the extinction of all value. They don’t attend the Gamblers Anonymous meetings or debt counseling sessions; they don’t suffer the porn-induced identity crises. In a darkly ironic twist, one might say vice has been permanently outsourced to the lower classes. The wealthy can reap the financial gains or mild entertainment benefits, while the less fortunate drown in the consequences.
This class insulation means that any calls to reform or regulate the digital vice economy often lack urgency. Lawmakers and opinion-shapers (who tend to be from more privileged backgrounds) might see these apps as harmless fun, because in their circles they are mostly harmless. Thus, the predatory nature of, say, nonstop sports-betting advertisements or virtually unregulated online porn or high-interest installment plans doesn’t hit home for them. The crisis remains largely invisible to those not living it. It’s just another unequal burden in an increasingly unequal America — like health outcomes or legal exposure — except this one is self-inflicted by design expertise that beggars even the darkest imagination.
Dopamine, Despair, and the Human Toll
Behind the slick interfaces and gamified rewards of these platforms lies a profound human toll. The psychological impact of constant engagement with digital vice is only beginning to be understood, but the early signs are alarming. We have, as Natasha Schull capably explains in Addiction by Design, engineered highly efficient addiction machines, and then distributed them en masse during a time of social malaise. The outcome? An epidemic of quietly broken minds.
Neurologically, the dopamine loops created by porn, gambling, and social apps exploit the same reward pathways as drugs. Neuroimaging studies have shown that pornography can stimulate the brain in patterns similar to addictive substances. A betting app that lets you spin a virtual roulette wheel on your phone triggers the same kind of anticipatory rush and reward release as a slot machine or a hit of amphetamine. These activities offer quick dopamine spikes followed by crashes, training the brain to seek another fix. Over time, the user needs more intense stimuli to feel the same kick — leading to riskier bets, more extreme porn, more debt-financed purchases. It’s a classic addiction cycle, supercharged by technology’s reach.
The mental health correlations are stark. A recent study on problematic pornography use found it is associated with significantly higher levels of anxiety, depression, stress, and loneliness among young adults. It’s not that porn alone causes all this, but for those prone to compulsive use (like Jake), it becomes both a symptom and amplifier of psychic pain. The isolation of a life lived through screens and the unfulfilling caress of the GH feeds into the loneliness that sent one to those screens in the first place — a vicious circle. Likewise, gambling addiction has one of the highest suicide rates of any addiction; the hopelessness of losing money, the shame, and the sense of personal failure can be overwhelming. In Jake’s world, it’s normal that he and his peers occasionally fantasize about “checking out” permanently when the debts and disappointment pile too high. (One shudders to think of the suicide statistics in this dystopia — the ultimate loss in a rigged game, so perhaps privately-operated, Klarna-financed suicide booths akin to those seen in Futurama will become a permanent part of the scene for people staring down debts no honest man can pay.)
Even those who aren’t at clinical addiction levels are affected by the ambient stress and cognitive distortions these apps introduce. For example, constantly seeing your betting app push “flash bets” (wagering on every play of a live game) encourages an inability to focus and an exaggerated response to random outcomes — essentially training people in superstition and impulsivity, two areas where humanzees already score high. Social media algorithms already eroded attention spans; add gambling to the mix and you have a generation of twitchy day-traders of fate, jumping at every notification. The BNPL culture, on the other hand, normalizes living in debt and erodes the concept of financial planning. When every purchase is chopped into micro-payments, people lose track of how much they’ve committed. A Bankrate survey found 56% of BNPL users have experienced at least one drawback, like spending more than intended or missing a payment, with Gen Z and millennials reporting the most issues. The psychological effect is subtle but profound: a constant low-grade stress humming in the background of daily life, an ever-present knowledge that you owe money to faceless entities. It’s hard to feel secure or hopeful about the future under such conditions.
Societally, the rise of these digital vice economies hints at a broader hollowing out of meaning that goes far beyond what Paul Goodman envisioned decades ago in Growing Up Absurd. Many young men have effectively retreated into virtual worlds where they can find the simulacra of what previous generations found in reality: sexual gratification, competitive triumph, even community (online forums and group chats where fellow bettors or porn aficionados hang out). There’s a sense of collective drifting. Fewer young adults participate in traditional milestones — labor force participation for young men dropped, marriage rates declined, community involvement waned. Why bother with the slower, more effortful paths to rewards (career, relationships, civic life) when hyper-palatable rewards are one tap away? This isn’t a moral judgment on those individuals, but a commentary on how the easy dopamine has undercut the harder but more fulfilling pursuits. It’s like we’ve given an entire generation the world’s most advanced Skinner box, and now we’re watching them pace inside, pressing levers for treats until they collapse from exhaustion.
Even physical health isn’t spared. The sedentary, screen-focused lifestyle leads to neglected sleep, poor diet (who has money or motivation to cook when stressed and broke?), and less physical exercise for an already ill and obese humanzee population. The stress can manifest in hypertension or other ailments, which, naturally, the affected often ignore because who can afford medical care? Who even wants to go on living? “Life itself should come with a DNR order,” as my late father liked to say.5 In the end, the digital vice trap attacks the person on all fronts: mental, emotional, financial, social, physical. It’s a slow degradation of what’s left of the already-frayed postmodern self.
Escaping the Cycle (Not)
Looking ahead, one must ask: is there any escape from this cycle? Can individuals like Jake break free, and can society recalibrate before this dystopia deepens? The answers are not encouraging, but they deserve exploration.
On an individual level, escape is difficult but not impossible. It requires a conscious effort akin to recovering from any addiction — a mix of personal determination, support, and often sheer luck or privilege. A tiny minority do manage to log off and climb out. Perhaps Jake hits rock bottom and has a moment of clarity: he seeks help from a support group, deletes the betting apps, installs porn blockers, consolidates and renegotiates his debts. There are precedents even today (the risible NoFap movement and more traditional SAA for porn abstinence, 12-step programs for gamblers, somewhat predatory and largely ineffective credit counseling services). But in Jake’s world, the problem is that these vices aren’t merely temptations to resist; they are the scaffolding of his life. Quitting them means upending his income, his social outlet, his coping mechanisms — essentially, starting life from scratch in a society that offers little support to begin with. It’s like trying to pull yourself out of quicksand by your own hair. Without strong external intervention, most will sink back in.
That puts the onus on broader societal change. Regulators could step in to curb the most predatory aspects of the vice economy. Indeed, there have been calls: e.g. a majority of Americans (65%) believe online sports betting will create more compulsive gamblers and support tighter regulations.6 Some legislators have floated limits on gambling ads or mandatory loss limits, and the DOGE-targeted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had, pre-Trump II, started scrutinizing BNPL firms for the debt traps they pose. But meaningful regulation often collides with powerful industry lobbies and the ideological bent toward “personal responsibility.” In a nation that has historically been laissez-faire about both business and vice aside from using the levers of power to make the powerful more so, expecting a sudden protective turn is optimistic. If anything, the vice industries are innovating faster than regulators can keep up — using AI to personalize addiction even more, or finding loopholes to offer new forms of betting (fantasy markets, loot boxes in video games) that hook the young early.
Socially, one could imagine a grassroots pushback. Perhaps one of these seemingly hopeless neo-Luddite or digital minimalist movement gains traction, and people intentionally revert to simpler phones and cash-only lifestyles to reclaim their brains. We see early glimmers of this as some Gen Z-ers flirt with “dopamine detoxes” and eschewing social media. But for the masses hooked through necessity, dropping out isn’t an option. It’s hard to renounce the only lifelines you have — there is no IRL/URL divide for them — however toxic they may be, without an alternative. Telling Jake to just quit porn and gambling and get a real job and make friends is a cruel joke if the jobs aren’t there and he’s too depressed to socialize. Any true solution would require systemic change: creating economic opportunities that make young people less desperate, building social programs that address isolation, educating from early on about digital literacy and mental resilience. These are tall orders, and they lie outside the interests of anyone currently profiting from the status quo.
So, barring a dramatic shift, the cycle is likely to continue. The technology will get more immersive (VR porn and AI sports betting are surely on the horizon), the lines between real and virtual economies will blur further (maybe Jake’s kids will be betting with cryptocurrency on e-sports played by hot AI streamers while financing virtual designer clothes for their avatars on credit). The rich, hungry for the value that keeps the machine from stopping, will keep building and selling these new opiates, and the poor will keep buying and consuming them, trying to fill voids that only grow larger.
One can’t help but marveling at the perversity of it all: a society that has turned its young men into both gladiators and spectators in a digital arena of vice. These bettors fight pointless battles against odds set by their social betters, cheer their fleeting victories, mourn their losses in private, and repeat — all while the real winners, the house and the platform and the lender, quietly rake in the spoils. It’s bread and circuses, if the bread is on layaway and the CGI circuses are streamed in 4K.
Is there hope? Perhaps in the margins. Humans have a way of seeking meaning even in wastelands. Maybe Jake finds camaraderie in an online forum of recovery, or stumbles upon a mentor who helps him out of the loop. Maybe the sheer obviousness of the exploitation sparks a populist outcry (“Cancel the dopamine debt!” might be a rallying cry someday). One can still imagine a future historian writing that the 2030s saw a reform wave once the costs — financial defaults, mental health crises, a generation of isolated men — became too dire to ignore.
Until then, we are left with an uneasy equilibrium. The digital vice economy hums along, snappy and seductive on the surface, brutal underneath, much like Jake’s daily apps. The wealthy few dip their toes for amusement, while the struggling many drown in it. It’s a near-future dystopia, yes, but also a reflection of truths already visible today. And as with any dystopia worth its salt, its continuation is a choice – one that society makes (or fails to make) each day.
Until something changes, poor Jake will remain on that hamster wheel, running ever faster toward nothing, chasing the next bet, the next video, the next payment — a modern Sisyphus with a smartphone in hand. The PH and GH work goes on, until the servers stop, or his heart does.
The only ones who truly escape are those who never had to enter the game.
Friends have noted that you can actually do a pretty fair job of recouping your losses if you stick around for the “skill” components of these games, but this slows down the betting and real gamblers aren’t doing that wimpy ish.
When doesn’t he, though ? “Must be a day that ends in ‘y,’” joked the hot college comedian, who was wanted in all 50 states for intent to commit murder via laughter, before proceeding to make some burping and farting sounds that always brought down the house.
“Depressing” for those accustomed to consuming content featuring lots of folks who are packing some real heat down there, that is.
For example, consider this tale of woe.
He chose to die in his bed at home. He was’t resuscitated, obviously.
Akin, alas, to my quixotic call for banning most social media platforms.