Many stories I’ve seen of lottery winners lost the money quickly through bad investments and/or developed major life issues (divorce, drug addiction).
I think there’s an element of rubbernecking there. The general feeling of the mob is that lottery = tax on stupidity. We are smart to not play the lottery. Story of a winner challenges general feeling, mob feels dumb for not buying winning ticket. Unmet need exists for story to make mob happy again.
General form of story is that lottery money is evil money. Lottery winners, far from being better than you, dear reader, are actually worse! They get divorced, they squander the money! Lawsuits!!
No one wants to read about the guy who retires and pays off his credit cards. No story there. But there are a lot of lotteries, so there will be an idiot somewhere you can use to reassure your viewers that they are double smart for not being rich.
It isn’t. It’s meant to point out that calling something a ’tax on stupidity” is itself meaninglessly deep-sounding. Intelligence is used for pretty much everything; calling something a tax on stupidity says nothing more about it than “it’s part of the world”.
Winning a lottery? (Generalize it to include genetic lottery etc.)
Many stories I’ve seen of lottery winners lost the money quickly through bad investments and/or developed major life issues (divorce, drug addiction).
I think there’s an element of rubbernecking there. The general feeling of the mob is that lottery = tax on stupidity. We are smart to not play the lottery. Story of a winner challenges general feeling, mob feels dumb for not buying winning ticket. Unmet need exists for story to make mob happy again.
General form of story is that lottery money is evil money. Lottery winners, far from being better than you, dear reader, are actually worse! They get divorced, they squander the money! Lawsuits!!
No one wants to read about the guy who retires and pays off his credit cards. No story there. But there are a lot of lotteries, so there will be an idiot somewhere you can use to reassure your viewers that they are double smart for not being rich.
The entire world is a tax on stupidity.
Sounds meaninglessly deep to me.
It isn’t. It’s meant to point out that calling something a ’tax on stupidity” is itself meaninglessly deep-sounding. Intelligence is used for pretty much everything; calling something a tax on stupidity says nothing more about it than “it’s part of the world”.