Keep Gambling

Submission 41,615

About

Keep Gambling and Pro-Gambling Memes refers to a series of ironic memes that advocate for gambling by stating that those who quit were just about to hit it big. Spawned by a 2013 satirical article, the format achieved viral presence with Whisper macros and tweets in 2022.

Origin

On June 6th, 2013, satirical news outlet The Onion published^[1] an article titled "Study: 83% Of Gamblers Quit Right Before They Would Have Hit The Big One" (snippet shown below), with the subheadline reading, "A new study says a majority of gamblers walk away from the table right before becoming millionaires."

Prior to November 9th, 2014, an unknown user posted an image macro reading, "Proven fact: 90% of gambling addicts quit right before they would have hit it big!" On November 9th, Imgur^[2] user FuckThisThingInParticular reposted the image, with the post gaining over 12,000 views in eight years (shown below).

Spread

On October 21st, 2022, Redditor^[3] domdod posted a digging for diamonds meme in the /r/okbuddyretard subreddit, where it gained over 210 upvotes in one year. On November 7th, Twitter^[4] user @ijustbluemyself reposted the meme, with the post gaining over 7,100 retweets and 90,400 likes in one year, with the image going more viral after that.

In Spring 2022, the "90% of Gamblers Quit" macro resurfaced online, reposted by multiple users on Facebook, Instagram, iFunny and other websites. For example, on March 5th, 2022, Facebook^[5] page The Casino Academy reposted the image, with the post gaining over 180 reactions and 30 shares.

In March 2022, memes ironically advocating for gambling by stating that those who quit were "about to hit it big" started going viral on social media. For example, on March 25th, Twitter^[6] user @AlbertsStuff made a tweet that received over 530 retweets and 11,400 likes in ten months (shown below, left). On July 2nd, 2022, Instagram^[7] page trashcanpaul posted a The Sopranos Whisper macro that received over 141,000 likes in six months and was widely circulated online (shown below, right). The post, based on the precursor 2014 meme, became a recaption trend called Fact: 90% of Gambling Addicts Quit Right Before They're About to Hit It Big going into 2023.

Ironic pro-gambling memes maintained similar levels of interest online through the second half of 2022.