And don’t get yourself all excited, that’s just a photo, you can’t watch the video from that picture.
Gambling is one of those things that has dubious practical value for society growing and improving that shows absolutely no sign of going away. It’s a zero sum game for the bettors with the twist of the house taking a fixed amount off of the amounts bet, so technically it’s a less than zero sum game looking at the angle of the bettors. The only way casinos lose money is if they screw up the math on the overhead. Giving away free drinks, free rooms, sucking up to the high rollers - all these are essentially a form of advertising costs.
If you poke around on the most recent gematria Twitter posts it’s nearly impossible to not find at least a few that are sports related. And if you dive in deeper through doom scrolling it’s nearly impossible to not see a Draft Kings advertisement.
From a US constitutional perspective, Twitter is (mostly) allowed to choose advertisers without government interference. And Draft Kings is (mostly) allowed to operate by choosing where they want to advertise.
The video is easily searched out, so you can dive into that on your own if you want to. It’s basically NBA cities losing in the playoffs because Taylor had a concert there. If you want to know more about the conspiracy, don’t check out this link:
If you were paying attention, I said DON’T check out that link. It’s a Draft Kings employee talking about nothing related to sports and all about what an uplifting concert experience there was at the event. And the door to the rabbit hole opens.
Taylor Swift has about a gazillion people following her. I myself am awfully fond of You Belong With Me, which may be because Weird Al Yankovic is a parody. She seems nice. Pleasant voice. Yeah, a real good choice for a celebrity spokesperson ad. But did she really want or expect to be associated with gambling?
Unlikely. This is the latest iteration of the Madden Curse, where fertile imaginations start pointing out all the hits and ignoring any misses. The Calvin Johnson section - “he retired unexpectedly” is one particularly lame defense considering he had a great year. Gambling sites don’t care about who is talking about what as long as they’re talking about gambling. It’s a less sinister version of the Alex Jones method of driving engagement by outright lying about what happened.
Unfortunately, just by math, these things can take on a life of their own when the misses are ignored. There’s precious little in the conspiracy world that encourages being wrong and producing a wide and numerous supply of failed predictions. Now the food chain is set up. Taylor concerts - sports - gematria sports Patreons - gematria sports tied in to extremist conspiracies - zero sum lack of improvement - further hopelessness leading to alternative bad ideas, etc…
I’m not picking on Draft Kings in particular, the Madden Curse link is a different site (Fan Duel). If the users are gambling in moderation instead of addiction it’s fine as a source of entertainment. It’s not like any of these sites are openly announcing they are using their profits to fund a foreign genocide or something. They are all just a fact of human existence and how gambling has been going on as a form of friendly competition above and beyond the outcome of the game.
Now you may need a more direct example of the gematria bad influence. To counter the more or less 50% winning record over a period of time, the occasional video is made that includes a self promotion of “how much money I’ve taken out of Vegas” or the like. No. No you haven’t. The house always takes in revenue when you view ALL bets made over a statistically significant period of time. They just need to not screw up on the spending on advertising. And getting a little free advertising at the expense of Taylor Swift feeling that it’s odd that people are talking about this is pretty low on the spectrum of bad things in the world.
But these people fall into the circles of influencers who have a job to be literally wrong about everything, stirring up trouble. Who is going to be able to predict when the next person with an innocuous product like a pillow is going to take off just because there’s a new crowd of people that don’t believe in evidence over emotions?
Maybe the Taylor Swift theory will die a sudden death if it doesn’t happen next year. Maybe their will be a couple years. Maybe something “close enough” will keep it going for a decade. One thing we do know, if it fails the odds of Gematria clowns admitting it a somewhere around 0%.
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