A thread on 5channel’s News Speed+ board asked just how long a vow of “I’ll never play pachinko again” actually lasts. It started with a post reading, “This is honestly pathetic — I’ve finally realized it’s just a waste of money,” which set off a wave of replies describing the mechanics of addiction: “Willpower alone won’t cut it,” “You keep going because you can’t forget that one big win.” The liveliest exchange came from a former pachinko parlor employee who recalled a regular customer who declared he was quitting — only to be back at the parlor like normal three days later. That drew a reply that stuck out: “Three days is nothing — the real addicts go back the very next day.”
This might sound out of nowhere, but gambling addiction is pathetic. People lose miserably, fly off the handle blaming the house for it, and then, before the words are even out of their mouths, they’re back at the tables again. That’s just how most of them are.
You’re the one placing the bet of your own free will, yet when you lose, you blame someone other than yourself. That’s genuinely pathetic.
The other day, a thread went up on 5channel titled “I’ll never play pachinko again.” The thread’s creator wrote, “This is honestly pathetic… I’ve finally realized it’s just a waste of money.”
Source: news.livedoor.com / Original article here
but by morning I've forgotten all about it, and there's desire looming through the gap in the curtains
Telling someone not to eat their boogers doesn't stop them from doing it in secret — like Adler said:
'separation of tasks.' (a concept from psychologist Alfred Adler)
Ah, the 'that's your problem, not mine' thing?
the 'nails' are done for. (the pins that control ball flow, industry slang for how loose/generous a machine is set)
Zero competition, so there's still money to be made.
Even someone who barely scraped a 4 in math class could get by just fine on it.
I got hooked on pachinko when I was young, but I quit after a long losing streak and after the AC in the parlors wrecked my health from sitting in it too long. It's been a quarter century now, and I don't get pulled in anymore even walking past a pachinko parlor.
You've got this, Moriyama Arito!
If you never learn how to win, you can't.
Every parlor's running remote-rigged machines these days
If they're going to rig it remotely, the least they could do is loosen up the nails so people can actually play, but they stubbornly won't even give us that
It's a boring game.
Isn't it that the nails aren't loosened precisely *because* it's not remote-rigged?
because every now and then they get a lucky birdie, a taste of success.
Same with pachinko: if you never had that taste of success, you'd have quit long ago.
That 'success' isn't really random, is it?
Places you visit for the first time, or after ages away, tend to go on big win streaks lol
Then you keep going back day after day, and eventually that first win gets wiped out and you're in the red.
It's because they're cushy retirement landing spots for bureaucrats (amakudari)
↓
Lottery = Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
Horse racing = Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
Keirin (bicycle racing) = Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
Boat racing = Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism
Auto racing = Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
Soccer lottery (toto) = Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
Casinos = Cabinet Office
And then there's pachinko = the police
There was even a case of a former National Police Agency chief landing a cushy job at a pachinko manufacturer
Give it time and the Digital Agency will probably start an online casino too
By the way, stocks and forex are basically state-run gambling courtesy of the old Ministry of Finance.
Guys like that are the reason your job existed in the first place.
Honestly, three days is pretty tame —
the truly hopeless cases go back the very next day.
Life is built out of waste.
Anything that stirs up desire the way money does should be tossed aside as fast as possible.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Under Japanese law, pachinko isn’t classified as gambling but as “play” (遊技), and it operates legally through the so-called three-shop system: players exchange their balls for prizes, which they then sell for cash at a separate prize-exchange counter. The pattern described in the thread — players swearing they’re done, only to be back within days — is a well-documented pattern in gambling-addiction research, driven by the urge to chase losses and by the way rare big wins distort judgment. Commenters also shared anecdotes about wealthy people mixing in among 1-yen pachinko players, but no statistics were cited on the industry’s actual customer base or financial performance — this remains a thread of personal anecdotes and opinions, so it should be read with that caveat in mind.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Games] After losing over and over, ‘I’ll never play pachinko again…’ Really now?“.
