Rob Minnick was in a bathroom in Paris when he realized he might need help. After flying 3,700 miles to explore the French capital, he would disappear for 10 or 15 minutes at a time.
“People must have thought I had the worst stomach problems in the world,” he said of his trip, in February 2022. While his stomach was fine, he wasn’t. Minnick had developed a gambling addiction.
As he stared at his phone, he had repeatedly searched for anything that could give him a quick fix, from quick sports betting and slot-style games to blackjack and roulette.
Upon returning home to New Jersey, he began attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings and did not gamble again for eight months. In November 2022, he walked into a casino and gambled so much money for 12 hours straight that it took him six months to pay off the debt.
Minnick was 23, broke and in need of help. He turned control of his bank account over to his family and returned to General Assembly meetings (a well-trodden path for many compulsive gamblers), but soon stumbled upon another, less conventional path to recovery.
Less than four months after his last bet, Minnick sat in a Dunkin’ drive-thru and stared at his phone again. This time, however, he started talking about how the odds of landing on black or red in a game of roulette are worse than one might think. Niche video post on TikTok, but it racked up over 1 million views.
Hundreds more followed suit, under the username rob_odaat: short for “one day at a time,” the popular mantra on aid programs like GA.
One mail Last year it started with footage of someone smashing a gambling terminal, before moving on to Minnick. “Honestly, I was there,” he says. “I never smashed any machines, but I smashed a lot of things in my life.”
Minnick said that over time, detailing his experiences with addiction and the potential dangers of gambling would give him “an active reason to talk about it more often and be accountable to more people.” His recovery became a “mix” between anonymous support groups and public posts on the Internet.
Gambling is booming in the United States and academics, doctors and activists have warned that increasing numbers of people appear to be struggling with problems. But compulsive gambling addiction is often endured and dealt with out of the public eye.
On TikTok, Minnick is in the minority. The platform is packed with videos highlighting the upside potential for punters: victorious big. But there is little scrutiny of the material advantages to the industry’s dominant firms when people bet big, or the disadvantage for bettors who run into problems.
These platforms are designed to capture attention. If a user watches most of a video, they can be sure to expect more of the same, whether it’s synchronized dance routines, advice on how to be “modest” in different situations, or gambling. A Drake clip Earning seven figures In roulette, for example, it could quickly lead to another one with an influencer. Speaking of winningand another with personality Claiming to offer a “money-making guarantee”“.
According to Minnick, now 25, these rabbit holes are helping to normalize gambling — which remains a legal activity in its infancy in dozens of states — among a young audience of social media users ages 19 and 20. While he creates posts about problem gambling in an attempt to redress the balance, he has been troubled by a prevailing discourse that divides into two distinct categories.
“The first thing is that gambling addiction is a joke,” Minnick said. “The scary category, and the one I think will cause a lot of problems, is that gambling is profitable. If you lose gambling, if you’re addicted to gambling, that means you’re a bad gambler and you haven’t figured out how to do it.”
This latter perception has helped set the stage for a micro-industry of influencers promoting gambling picks and advice. “None of that really works,” Minnick said. “The people who make the money are not the ones who are making the money.” doing The spikes. They are the ones that sale “the spikes.”
In one In his post, Minnick listed 20 questions, of which seven affirmative answers are considered a red flag for problem gambling. Top comments included: “I’m not addicted, I’m dedicated”; “$20 says I answered yes to more questions than you”; and “20/20, but I’m in for a big win.”
Minnick feels outnumbered. “I’m a guy who makes videos at home,” he said, facing off against “production companies who make fantastic videos” and influencers who promote his victories. It would be easier, he suggested, if a top celebrity came forward and talked about his gambling problems. “Right now it’s David versus Goliath, naturally. I don’t have anything on my side.”
Last year Netflix launched Analgesica drama series about Purdue Pharma, the former maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, and its role in the opioid epidemic. To Minnick, the plot sounded familiar.
At Purdue, the mindset was: “Our drug does good things for most people who use it, and the people who abuse it are the ones who should take the blame — it’s their fault, it’s not our drug’s fault,” Minnick said. The gambling industry’s advertising around “responsible gambling” — and its focus on how players themselves, rather than gambling platforms, should act responsibly — “is pretty much exactly the same,” he concluded, whether intentional or not.
Minnick still believes the way those messages are presented is “just offensive to problem gamblers,” but his views have softened somewhat. There are plenty of “well-meaning” people working in gambling companies’ responsible gambling divisions, he said, “but their hands are tied as to how much they can help before it becomes a problem for profits.”
According to Minnick, reminders to gamble responsibly are helpful to 90% of people who gamble. But in his view, these messages are aimed at the 10% of gamblers (those at risk of developing problems or who have already developed them) who cannot simply be told to do so.
“Responsible gaming is great, but it’s not a skill that can be learned,” he said. “It’s something that 90% of people already do. And that’s not where the industry makes money.”
