I'm the One Born Every Minute

Yes, I downloaded one of those "win real money" games. Yes I won money. No, I have no idea how it's legal.

It’s morning. You lay in bed, unwilling to get up and face the horrors of a day of adult responsibility. You spend 45 minutes or so scrolling through videos of cats, pictures of friends out having a good time, and ads. You skip the ads, because you are attempting to maintain at least one habit that is within the realm of sane and healthy.

I have probably watched every single ad for a phone game. There are about a million of them, and they star about a dozen different actors, each of whom has become more familiar to me than my family or friends. The premise of each ad is simple, and takes place in a Randian hellscape:

Money and abundance are a thing you either have because you have the strong will to acquire it in so much abundance that you don’t notice when thousands of dollars go missing, or you’re a piece of shit worthy of being publicly ridiculed.

A fast food worker offers a starving homeless woman a French fry from the garbage. Men drag their pregnant wives out of what is presumed t…