The Mirage casino, which ushered in an era of Las Vegas Strip megaresorts in the '90s, is closing

robocall@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 145 points –
The Mirage casino, which ushered in an era of Las Vegas Strip megaresorts in the '90s, is closing
apnews.com
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It does feel kinda weird when one of those old casinos actually closes.

But when I was visiting my brother last, he said one cool thing he likes about Vegas is that it's always new. Whereas places like New York, Chicago, St. Louis are old cities with a lot of old architecture, which can be beautiful, Las Vegas is like constantly changing it up so there's almost always something new.

At least Terry Benedict still has two other casinos.

"If you guys are going after Terry Benedict, you better goddamn know..."

I love that first one. The sequels are good too, but that first one is the best.

Enshittification comes for Vegas. The money will still flow, you'll just get less actual entertainment for it.

How rapidly that word has become meaningless. It just means “I want to bitch about something” now.

So, like, the word has suffered from enshittification?

No. Enshittification specifically refers to a business slowly squeezing everything out of its monopoly position and making life worse for everyone involved.

This here is just a failing business scaling (or shutting) down. Nothing more.

How is this not the Enshittification of gambling?

What used to be a destination with entertainment and competition for your attention has become online sports betting, gatcha games targeting minors, and online casinos. This used to be a destination with attractions for every type of person (circus circus Even, for the kids!), that supported hundreds of thousands of workers. Now it's sweat shop programmers and overseas tech support, goodbye Vegas.

Again, because enshittification refers to the exploitative monopoly.

Vegas as a whole never had a monopoly, no individual casino in Vegas had a monopoly, and today's online gambling has certainly some larger players, but none of them have the market power to squeeze both sides as much as Amazon does.

What you're seeing is simply a shift within the market. Nothing else. Yes, people are being exploited, but not because of some monopoly that forces them to do so. There's plenty of competition in the online gambling sector.

While I agree with you, I do also feel like everything in the world has gotten shittier.

Except I will justify this as enshittification because: online sports betting, gacha mobile games, and online slots have taken over for free entertainment, ridiculously cheap high quality food, and a tourism entertainment, because the prior is cheaper to maintain, quicker to deploy, and more easily accessible to the average user, and the latter required more upkeep, more American jobs, and wasn't as obscenely profitable (somehow....)

So yes, this is a pretty text book example of the Internets enshittification of a market.

I'm interested to see how I'm just using this as "I want to bitch about something", because I honestly disliked Vegas and have never been a big gambler (though every time I have, I've walked away with a profit, but I don't think I'll tell you my strategy, 100% guaranteed low stakes winnings, because your energy is too damn negative, and I don't wish you any happiness in life, besides that I hope you have a wonderful Friday.)

Watch out, guys, he has a foolproof gambling strategy.

I've walked out of 5 casinos with more than I walked in with, I've shown many people, none of them will deny it's effectiveness.

You aren't walking away with life changing money, but I've never once lost money at a casino, nor have any of my friends who go with me.

But much like this thread, it's easier to doubt.

I mean this implies that Vegas was ever good. A position I will argue strongly against.

The thing about Vegas is that they have figured out, no matter who you are, a way to extract money out of you.

In this thread, people so excited to point at "the person using the word wrong" they haven't considered that the Internet is really fucking Vegas up right now, and the thousands of wage slaves that find their honest lively-hood there.