The analysis of the spread of gambling addiction in our country practically does not take into account the contribution of the invisible army of affiliates, people who are not independently engaged in the creation of illegal resources, do not own them, but, nevertheless, have their share of income from types of online gambling prohibited in our country.
A strange phenomenon and gray, inconspicuous people who are not particularly eager to advertise their activities to involve all strata of our society in gambling. In other areas, everything is simpler and clearer. There is a clear definition of proceeds from crime – it is money or other property obtained as a result of a crime. That is, any income received from the operation of a poppy plantation or hangar, where synthetic dope is produced, are proceeds from crime. Any income received from the bottling of counterfeit booze and the drinking of the population is the proceeds of crime. But the income from the fact that in our country thousands of affiliates help gambling resources prohibited by law to add gambling to citizens with a predisposition to gambling addiction and make them gambling addicts, this seems to be nothing in our country, respectable. A site where places with stupidity tabs are indicated is a crime, a point selling fake vodka is a crime, an affiliate site with working links to prohibited gambling resources is a minor offense, for which Roskomnadzor only slightly reprimands the site by blocking it. The promotion of smoking and alcohol is bad, the promotion of gambling is like nothing, since even such a respected platform as YouTube, tirelessly caring about the rights of children, turns a blind eye to the fact that streamers of online casinos introduce these very children to the world with their broadcasts excitement. The dialogue with these figures about why at least the 18+ settings are not set on streams leads to only one thing: “no one forces you to watch,” “it’s up to parents to look after their children,” and so on. According to this logic, the pervert, showing his “economy” on the street to children, has exactly the same excuse – “the parents are to blame, the child alone was released and not protected from me.”
Vile and vile logic. Yes, among them there are more or less decent people, but they, in principle, do not care what their brothers in the craft of special, so to speak, vileness are doing. Streamers playing on dubious gambling sites, which cannot even be named online casinos, where there is no verification at all and whose clientele is mainly young, often minors, citizens. Affiliate girls leading various groups on social networks, the main audience of which is pregnant women, mothers on maternity leave and housewives. Spammers blotting out everything and everyone with referral links in the hope that a simpleton will register on them and the margin will start dripping from him. Bearded “Oksana”, bombing profiles in social networks of more or less decent-looking men in the hope of charming them with stolen somewhere photos of languid beauties and stories on behalf of these beauties, how they allegedly earn huge money! on a certain gambling resource. All you need to become a rich man too is to register using the “secret” link that the beauty will send.
The most successful of them from time to time gather at conferences to discuss how to lure simpletons into the net of excitement at a cheaper price. The most primitive can only afford a bottle of mild alcohol as a bonus for their labor. They have only one thing in common – the desire to live well at the expense of gambling addicts. By and large, all of them do not care, due to which at the end of the month they receive “partner” 30 pieces of silver. What difference does it make that this is a monthly salary lost by the breadwinner of the family, and the wife and the kids must now tighten their belts, depriving themselves of the essentials in favor of the owner of the gambling resource and the affiliate? Do you care that this money is an unbearable loan taken by elderly parents and safely lost by a child? What difference does it make that a deceived friend will never wait for the debt to be paid back, and the wedding rings will not be bought from a pawnshop? Yes, there is no difference! Nobody pulls the hand. And where was the head when he did it? A standard set of phrases for complacency and shifting all the negativity onto the gambling addict himself. And what can a gambler do? It is, in fact, a powerless resource biomass that exists only to provide finance for the “masters of life.” Even his moans and attempts to express his displeasure are diligently washed out and banned, so as not to spoil the resources of the affiliate with negativity. Do not interfere with new simpletons to catch the bird of happiness by registering using referral links, carefully located by the affiliate in the most prominent place of their resource and regularly updated.
Such are they, the invisible tax collectors of the gambling industry, thanks to which online gambling is spreading at such a monstrous pace. Advertising, even the most perfect, is not capable of luring even a fifth of the clientele in an online casino from those that involve an experienced affiliate in gambling. And, naturally, gambling addicts from his actions become as many times more than from the actions of marketers of the gambling resource itself. So they work off their 30 pieces of silver (or even all 50!) Not for fear, but for conscience.
So far, this problem, in fact, does not exist either for atrophied psychology and psychotherapy, which seems to be trying to do something about gambling addiction, or for official statistics on gambling addiction, and, in fact, there is no statistics itself either. Gambling resources are unlikely to share their data with official medicine and Rosstat. One can only hope that one day this situation will be corrected and the contribution of these people, as well as the fact that their earnings are not taxed in any way, will be appreciated by the state authorities. In the meantime, even so, a small essay on this topic from me, an expert in the field of gambling addiction, gambling addiction and scam studies, Alexander Ustinovich.