Polyma(sochism)rket
Gambling on its own is arguably the worst thing ever happened to our society, and now you can literally bet on anything, not just football games; from warfare around the globe to the odds of curing cancer before a specific date. You have people from the governments gambling on the prospect of a new crisis in the Middle East and earning generational wealth solely because they have access to secret information that we don't. The same individuals use that money to visit a particular island, but that's a story for another day.
My main point is that Polymarket’s rapid rise represents more than just a new platform; it’s a legal, documented version of high-stakes games like those portrayed in “Squid Game”. This is especially striking, given recent cultural conversations about anti-imperialism and inequality, as seen in both “Squid Game” and “Parasite”. It appears that public desensitization to tragedy is now so decisive that monetizing trauma has become disturbingly easy.
During recent protests in Iran, as was the case earlier in Venezuela, people began betting on highly sensitive events, like whether Trump would attack Iran or if Khamenei’s regime would fall. Journalists started using data from these gambling sites to shape their analysis. What startled me was the level of influence such platforms now possess. It’s not surprising to imagine that insiders, armed with exclusive information, could bet on life-and-death outcomes for profit, and nobody cares about it.
The animosity of Polymarket is shadowing the world in a way that no other new technology is doing so. When the attention of your audience is shifting from actual news agencies towards a gambling website, it indicates the status of dehumanization that we are dealing with in the big 2026, thanks to our great leaders around the world.