The Gambler Analysis

In “The Gambler” by Palo Bacigalupi, many interesting ideas and issues are raised in the context of The Media today. In “The Gambler,” Bacigalupi refers to the inner workings of The Media as “the maelstrom.” I found this metaphor to be extremely accurate for a few reasons. The metaphor also brings to light some key issues with our relationship to The Media today.
Firstly, like a maelstrom, The Media is continuously active. In “The Gambler,” Ong would check the maelstrom in the middle of the night to see the maelstrom increasing and decreasing as people click on and off. This raises the issues that it is almost impossible to escape The Media’s 24/7 presence in today’s society. Sometimes, I can find myself clicking on article after article on my social media feeds, sitting on a bus or a subway and reading every advertisement, or driving through a city and being bombarded with billboards. Most of the time I will continue doing all these activities completely unaware of how intentionally surrounded I am by media. Not only do The Media Giants make content

and advertisements readily available (even when you don’t want it) but they have made us so inclined to keep using it. Companies such as “Milestone Media,” the company Ong works for in “The Gambler” use this to their advantage.

This relates to the second characteristic of the maelstrom; the vortex.

The vortex has two attributes. One, is “the pull.” The Media uses many different tactics to get your draw you in, get
your attention, and keep it. In “The Gambler,” the maelstrom generated celebrity gossip stories about Double DP’s striking incidents, which hooked readers and generated clicks. Stories such as “Double DP impregnates fourteen-year-old daughter of face sculptor” or tags such as “underage” and “pedophilia” are written because the astonishing headlines and subject matter will draw people in. Sometimes, I find myself reading magazine headlines with ridiculous headlines and being more likely to buy those magazines rather than the latest issue of National Geographic. The second attribute would be the idea of “no escape.” Like I mentioned before, there is no escape from The Media surrounding us once you have already “succumbed to

it.”
A separate issue “The Gambler” raises is the idea of The Media choosing what we consume, or the idea of The Media vs. Reality. In “The Gambler,” Ong’s boss prefers that he generates celebrity gossip articles and interviews rather than articles about important biological issues. Ong’s boss is the one who is basically deciding what the general population gets to read about, and in turn what is important in our society. Behind the scenes, you may realize that some of Ong’s biological issues are much more important, but if you never knew about them in the first place, how would you know? Who gives The Media Giants the right to choose what is important and what isn’t, and how are we supposed to find reality if there is no source for it?
Overall, “The Gambler” raises many key issues in relation to The Media and our relationship with it today. It is important that we continue to think critically about the media we are consuming so that our reality is not just The Media