Human beings. We’re … we’re fucking suckers. Sorry, there’s no other way to put it. But that’s okay. You know that, I know that, and people who work in advertising and sales and money sure as shit know that.
We’re suckers for anything flashy, and when we see something bright and shiny, we develop the cerebral processing power and instincts of a squirrel.
“Oh, that, wants.”
The brains behind the lottery definitely know that — they’re much smarter than you and me, for not only are they not the ones buying lottery tickets, they are also the ones who invented the lottery — and so recently, they decided to do something to make Powerball more flashy.
Namely, they made it harder to win. Which made humans want to play it more.
We really are fucking suckers. In October, officials with Powerball tremendously decreased the odds anyone would win the jackpot, which is why we are seeing these massive rollovers.
These insanely high top prizes aren’t the result of no one being lucky, they’re because no one is able to be lucky. Yet, we’re still snapping up tickets.
[A] rule change in October made it much easier for the lottery jackpot to reach these world-record heights by making it a lot harder for players to win it.
Technically speaking, winning a prize is easier now: A Powerball player has a 1-in-25 chance of winning something, compared to a 1-in-32 chance before the change, which was implemented in early October.
But that same change made taking home the jackpot much more difficult, as the odds rose from 1 in roughly 175 million to 1 in roughly 292 million.
What is the chance you would be the one person in all of America picked for something at random. Like your name out of a hat of 300 million names. Now, you’ve got that same shot to win Powerball.
(No, for real, we even made a video about it. Also, this would be a good time to tell you to follow BroBible Video on Facebook.)
Yet, people are gaining more and more interest, even though the bet has become even more absurd. It’s all thanks to adding more numbers.
To make the jackpot harder to win, the association, , which runs the game, simply increased the number of white balls. That change — growing the pool from 59 to 69 choices — more than doubled the available combinations of white balls.
And people went oohhhmegoodd gimmie.
“Powerball has been revamped seven other times in its 23-year history so that the game can continue to be attractive to players by delivering the big jackpots that players want, and these new changes will do just that,” Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery [when the changes were implemented]
The big jackpots that get us excited, but that we will not win.
Like I said. We’re fucking suckers.
[Via The Washington Post]