Humanity is disgusting. So greedy, so petty and focussed on itself. I’m not trying to say I’m the odd one out. I’ll happily say “people are idiots”, and add “and I’m one of them” to it. I don’t have false pretenses of being the special snowflake, the most prettiest and unique. I’m part of the same compost heap, so to speak.

But what really vexes me, what really gets my goat time and time again is the pathetic desperation of gamblers.

Imagine yourself. It’s 2am, you’re fighting off a sleep that seems more insistent to fall on you this time. You’re sitting in a gaudily decorated casino that has the floor size of an average home with the walls removed. There are mirrors all around you, tacky ‘glass’ chandeliers and a false marble floor. Your rear is perched on a lightweight, tacky chair with cream short-pile upholstery, and flaking gold paint that reveals the plastic underneath.  Behind you, a group of men in their late twenties, possibly early thirties are stood wearing freshly-pressed tuxedos clutch at glasses of cheap Carling, and listening in, their slurred, uncultured voices loudly proclaim about “that well fit chick i banged last night”.

It’s all a pretense. The  plastic chairs, the resin chandelier, the chav staple of Carling…everything here is so awful it’s practically become a mockery of itself. Outside the bar, the playing tables are quiet, and the occasional chirps of the slot machines over the clattering of the hoarded chips. I think those machines made me cringe more than the men in their hired suits, and their women -of questionable origin, at that- hovering at their shoulders as they listened to the men-folk drink to their sexual conquests. They’re still drilled into my brain. I half hoped the lack of sleep would have erased the memory from my mind. Kitty Glitter, Enchanted Unicorn, Wolf Run and Lucky Larry’s Lobster Mania were the four I remember. Their sickening names and promises of money make me shudder every time I think about them.

But the part that shocked me and turned me just a shade more misanthropic? The roulette. Sure, play poker, play blackjack. There’s a vague element of strategy in these things. But roulette? A mug’s game, at best.

I witnessed over the course of four hours so much money trade hands or be completely lost to the moloch machine that is the gambling industry I felt just a little bit ill. Distinct memories of watching one man with a tacky tribal tattoo, who must have been no more than 25 lose £60 in just half an hour. And that was the money I personally witnessed being put down as chips. When he wandered off, I can only dread to imagine how much more he sank.

Here’s the thing. I watched him and many others for hours, and I never saw him get one single chip back. It all disappeared. His pockets didn’t rattle like the businessmen’s. But then, the businessmen had been putting down £80 of chips at a time. They were bound to get a few back, at least.

But the last thing I saw before I left was perplexing and frustrating at best. A group of Asian men in their 30s, trading £40 for a huge stack of colour chips, then proceeding to put them all down on one number. Repeatedly. If they lost their chips, which happened time and time again, they bought another £40 and put them down. Eventually one of them did win while doing one of these ridiculous moves, and pocketed £500 in chips. I didn’t know how much he’d already spent to get there.

I left feeling perplexed, shocked, and hateful. Greed drives every good man to ruin, desperation only assists it. The pretenses that the people I saw held, like they were superior, more grown up for wasting their money at a casino, and the ones who thought that they would be the one to beat the system. Casinos are a business, they’re not there to help you. They are the great moloch machine that has destroyed thousands across the globe.

Of course, what would a person barely in their twenties know about the big world of men?  How they are the one who cheats the system, becomes a millionaire and lives the dream. They are the one who cheats the system, gets kicked out of the casino with not a penny to show for it. They will squander their fortune on hopes of becoming something more. Something more real.

But all the suits, bowties and riches in the world couldn’t stop these people from being bottom-feeding scum.