Vibes Gambling

There are many ways to describe the state of the world we’re living in: The Information Age, The Brainrot Era, The Slop Society. But the one that feels most resonant is The Casino Economy.

We’re no longer just betting on stocks, or on Arsenal to win the league, or even on whether Trump will start a war – we’re gambling with who we are. It sounds a bit dramatic. But influencers – or, more broadly, influential people – are adjusting their opinions and personalities to ensure they’re reaching the biggest audience. Performing conviction, but having none of it.

Teddy T.M. Brown calls this “vibes gambling”. In a recent Substack essay, he explains:

“The casino economy is turning cynical people into cultural day traders, constantly repositioning based on which way the sentiment is moving, [they] have learned that in an economy where traditional pathways to stability have collapsed, the only rational response is to treat everything as a bet that they can get on the end of.”

Brown points to the Nelk Boys, YouTube comedians known for pulling pranks, interviewing Benjamin Netanyahu, or Tucker Carlson openly criticising the Trump administration after vocally working to get the orange guy elected. “[Carlson] is not going through some sort of political awakening,” Brown writes, “but rather looking out across the country and seeing which ways his audience is leaning.”

It’s a level of performance above what we’re used to seeing on social media. And it’s the same tactic used by many of the influencers Louis Theroux interviews in his Welcome To The Manosphere documentary. One of them, Harrison Sullivan, aka HStikkytokky, tells Theroux: “I’m doing it for money... if I’d just done good things, I would never have really blown up on social media in the first place.”