The Drunk and The Ugly

The Drunk and The Ugly


Thought Crimes Episode 15 – Rose Colored Glasses

November 02, 2020

The casino business had changed. Not as much as anyone thought it was going to, but it had changed. With the advent of the chip that changed the world, sleep no longer existed in a meaningful way for most. The night stretched on and on, with anxiety and fatigue weighing you down. The sun takes away the light, and reminds you that you are cold and alone without it. A perfect opportunity for a company to bring in optimism, hope, kind faces, good food, and a gorgeous environment free from the petty differences of day and night. You could come in and play until you lost interest or your money ran dry, and coincidentally those were the top two reasons the House would prefer you not stick around. But that was how the people changed, not the casino. The casino, on its own motivations, updated to meet the times. No more expensive upkeep of the room, or interior decorating to match what you could only hope the richest of your potential customers found appealing. Instead, an Alternate Reality display, letting all the decoration take place in your special casino glasses, guaranteed to make you look and feel and gamble like a cool person worth a lot of money. And those glasses made small changes here and there, to test you, to see what you liked, to see how your betting habits and spending increased through the connected casino interfaces. And those data could be sold to other casinos, to researchers, to advertisers, to build up the efficiency of the economic system that made society run. Everyone wins, in their own way. But mostly the House. After all. It’s Only Business.