Peter Gofen (18)
Lines of Chance
We had sent out the family room carpet to be cleaned a week ago—the return delivery challenging with my mother out of town—and finally had the hardwood covered again. The carpet’s a soft fabric, a white base with blue vertical stripes—or, I suppose, horizontal. It depends which way you look.
Now the carpet was dirty again. I met my mom’s look of mortification as I hurried to clean up my smoothie of peanut butter and banana and granola and protein powder and milk and ice. It was too late, though. The damage was already done.
The word mirror derives from the Latin verb “miror, mirari” meaning “to look at, wonder, or be amazed at.” While “mirror” can work as a verb in English, mirrors are also physical objects—establishing a form within the realm of nouns. The versatility of mirrors, however, exists in the physical world as well as the linguistic.
What makes us so occupied, obsessed, consumed with our appearance? Why do we change our behavior in order to present ourselves in a certain way? It manifests itself in any number of ways—from the clothes we wear to the muscles we target in the gym—and there’s no better example of self-presentation than social media. Especially the ones where you have a profile that’s often private and an exclusive list of “friends” or “followers” that form the only 842 people in the world that can see how amazing you look in that new outfit. The ones where you carefully select and edit every pixel of every picture to make sure every detail is absolutely perfect. The ones where you beg a friend for a clever joke to post or caption to write or comment to validate your endeavor. The ones where self-worth is measured in likes and too few means you’re not pretty enough, you’re not “swole” enough, you’re not good enough.
Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors” was released in February 2013 as part of The 20/20 Experience. In its bridge, Timberlake belts, “With your hand in my hand and a pocket full of soul / I can tell you there’s no place we couldn’t go / Just put your hand on the glass / I’m here tryin’ to pull you through.” It’s a usage of dual apostrophe, as while Timberlake addresses the lyrics both to a lover—perhaps his wife, Jessica Biel—the music video suggests an interaction with a literal mirror. Ambiguous, also, is what constitutes the “pocket full of soul.”
In 2017, the biggest slot machines in the world don’t only reside in Vegas. They’re in your pocket. Facebook has over 2 billion monthly active users; Instagram, 800 million; Google+ 3 or 4 dozen.¹ Rather than gambling money, though, you’re throwing out time, energy, and self-esteem. Does it really mean that much to get a virtual “like” from your crush? And what makes you more than an analytic, when sites like Facebook brag about manipulating the emotions and mental states of their own users?² Despite public backlash, Mark Zuckerberg’s creation doubled down with a new terms of service allowing Facebook to scan how you surf the Internet, the apps you use, and your physical location in order to target advertising. It was January 2015, and there was no way to opt out.
FanDuel tightropes a thin line when it comes to creating—and advertising—their contests. While it’s important to have some autonomy over the results—both for padding egos and fighting lawsuits—a big component of the company’s marketing centers around the idea that an “Average Joe” can simply pick a few players and come out big. A 2015 promotion included a player who “deposited a total of $35 on FanDuel and won over $2 million,” as if that could be you if you just have the right feeling Alvin Kamara is going off this week.
Although mirrors reflect, they can also distort. The same object can look completely different depending on the angle, the lighting, the perspective. In a sense, it makes it frivolous for us to label—as Timberlake journeys through a mirror maze, he admits, “We’re making / Two reflections into one.” We want to measure and answer and quantify and yet sometimes that isn’t possible.
Perhaps the decision on whether to join social media or not has become a prisoner’s dilemma. The classic game theory problem is described by William Poundstone as follows: “Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They hope to get both sentenced to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to: betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent. The offer is:
● If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison.
● If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa).
● If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge).”
The biggest inherent difference with social media in contrast to the standard prisoner’s dilemma is the number of players—a lack of defined outcomes secondarily apparent—but the overall concept stands forth. You know you’re going to be turned in, because those millions and billions of profiles already exist, so it becomes almost impossible not to join—who wants to be ostracized in jail? As more people find their way out, it becomes even harder to stay in—eschewing the snitching of hopping on board yourself—for the ones remaining. Except it should be reversed; social media is the jail, and we’re all stuck in it.
In January 2015, Daily Fantasy Sports site FanDuel approached MIT professor Anette Hosoi, asking her to analyze the results of contests from up to a million players to determine whether the company’s offerings could be constituted games of skill. The query needed support for People by Schneiderman v. Fanduel, Inc. “New York's state constitution, Art. 1 § 9, prohibits gambling unless a specific exception applies. N.Y. Penal Law § 225.00(2) defines ‘gambling’ as staking or risking something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or future contingent event not under the person's control or influence with the hope of receiving something of value if a certain outcome occurs.”
I closed a Facebook tab shortly before beginning this piece, in fact. I’ve wagered at least a couple hundred dollars on sites like FanDuel. And there are nearly a dozen mirrors in our apartment, which really isn’t blessed with wall space to begin with.
The balance of skill vs. chance is crucial in creating a popular yet legal game. Games that are too skill-driven, like chess, aren’t played for money. Add in too much randomness, however—such as in poker or blackjack or roulette—and you’re going to need the extra expense of a flight to Nevada.
If we finish out Alice Morse Earle’s quote³ —adapted into “Mirrors”—we’re left prepared to unwrap the day and see what it brings. “Yesterday is history / Tomorrow’s a mystery.” I’m not sure if I do that, though, or if we even do that.
Anette Hosoi’s report came back conclusive. Against intelligent simulations, actual user lineups won 86% of the time in NFL and 95% of the time in NBA and 73% of the time in MLB and 68% of the time in NHL. Data suggests that skill persists and increases over time, with user skill playing a more significant role than in poker and even in comparison to the actual games of each sport. In fact, it turns out that there might be too much skill involved in Daily Fantasy Sports, or at least not enough balance throughout the site’s payouts. A report found that for the first half of the 2015 MLB season, 1.3% of players won 91% of the contest profits. Sure, they bet larger and more frequently, putting in 40% of the entry fees, but the ultimate result remains staggering. If you’re not part of that 1.3%, you’re probably just feeding into their winnings.
In the end, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman signed a settlement with FanDuel, and a bill formally legalizing and regulating DFS contests in New York passed in August 2016. Player prices and sports-book lines lived another day.⁴
But maybe the direction of the lines on the carpet doesn’t matter when they’re covered in smoothie.
1. Google+ actually sits around 110 million, apparently.
2. Facebook did a study on “massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,” in which the platform manipulated the feeds of over 689,000 users in order to analyze the effects on the users’ posts and reactions. If this is what they’re telling us, you really have to wonder what else is being experimented that we aren’t told about…
3. Earle’s original quote: “The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present.”
4. To be clear, sports-books are not allowed in New York as sports betting falls under the category of being an event not under a person’s control. Regardless, the win for DFS—especially in such a big state—functioned as a big win for fantasy sports and similar games. Player prices refer to the “budget” you have on sites like FanDuel, where better players are more expensive and the idea is to find value based on the pricing. That’s where most of the “skill” comes in.
Works Cited
FanduelVideos. “2015 FanDuel One-Week Fantasy Football Commercial.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Aug. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnvTXsqLxoE.
“Alice Morse Earle > Quotes.” Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/44874.Alice_Morse_Earle.
Booth, Robert. “Facebook reveals news feed experiment to control emotions.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 29 June 2014, www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds.
“Daily Fantasy Sports Is Back In Business In New York: Cuomo Signs Bill.” Legal Sports Report, 4 Aug. 2016, www.legalsportsreport.com/10890/ny-enacts-dfs-law/.
“For daily fantasy sports operators, the curse of too much skill.” SportsBusiness Daily | SportsBusiness Journal | SportsBusiness Daily Global, www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2015/07/27/Opinion/From-the-Field-of-Fantasy-Sports.aspx.
Hosoi, Anette. “AFFIDAVIT OF PROFESSOR ANETTE (PEKO) HOSOI.” Daily Fantasy Sports 911, Supreme Court of the State of New York, 23 Nov. 2015, www.dailyfantasysports911.com/sites/default/files/AFFIDAVIT%20OF%20PROFESSOR%20ANETTE%20(PEKO)%20HOSOI.pdf.
justintimberlakeVEVO. “Justin Timberlake - Mirrors.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Mar. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=65&v=uuZE_IRwLNI.
“Justin Timberlake – Mirrors.” Genius, 11 Feb. 2013, genius.com/Justin-timberlake-mirrors-lyrics.
Kramer, Adam D. I., and Jamie E. Guillory. “Experimental evidence of massive-Scale emotional contagion through social networks.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, National Acad Sciences, www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full.
Metro.co.uk, Rob Waugh for. “Facebook has changed its privacy settings TODAY - here's what you need to know.” Metro, 30 Jan. 2015, metro.co.uk/2015/01/30/facebook-has-changed-its-privacy-settings-today-heres-what-you-need-to-know-5042856/.
Poundstone, William. Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb. Anchor, 1993.
Swaminathan, Nikhil. “Are Fantasy Sports Really Gambling? - Issue 44: Luck.” Nautilus, 19 Jan. 2017, nautil.us/issue/44/luck/are-fantasy-sports-really-gambling-rp.
“The Prisoner's Dilemma in detail.” OpenLearn, The Open University, 30 Aug. 2006, www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/philosophy/the-prisoners-dilemma-detail.
“Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites and Apps [November 2017].” DreamGrow, 5 Dec. 2017, www.dreamgrow.com/top-15-most-popular-social-networking-sites/.
Wright, Joesph. “FanDuel, DraftKings Play for Keeps in N.Y. Courtroom.” FanDuel, DraftKings Play for Keeps in N.Y. Courtroom | Bloomberg BNA, www.bna.com/fanduel-draftkings-play-n57982063993/.
Peter Gofen is an 18-year-old senior at the Latin School in Chicago, Illinois. He has a passion for crafting words, and his YouTube channel--PeterJaguars—has over 2.5 million video views. Peter will be attending Stanford University following his graduation this June and looks forward to continuing his writing career in college.
Lines of Chance
We had sent out the family room carpet to be cleaned a week ago—the return delivery challenging with my mother out of town—and finally had the hardwood covered again. The carpet’s a soft fabric, a white base with blue vertical stripes—or, I suppose, horizontal. It depends which way you look.
Now the carpet was dirty again. I met my mom’s look of mortification as I hurried to clean up my smoothie of peanut butter and banana and granola and protein powder and milk and ice. It was too late, though. The damage was already done.
The word mirror derives from the Latin verb “miror, mirari” meaning “to look at, wonder, or be amazed at.” While “mirror” can work as a verb in English, mirrors are also physical objects—establishing a form within the realm of nouns. The versatility of mirrors, however, exists in the physical world as well as the linguistic.
What makes us so occupied, obsessed, consumed with our appearance? Why do we change our behavior in order to present ourselves in a certain way? It manifests itself in any number of ways—from the clothes we wear to the muscles we target in the gym—and there’s no better example of self-presentation than social media. Especially the ones where you have a profile that’s often private and an exclusive list of “friends” or “followers” that form the only 842 people in the world that can see how amazing you look in that new outfit. The ones where you carefully select and edit every pixel of every picture to make sure every detail is absolutely perfect. The ones where you beg a friend for a clever joke to post or caption to write or comment to validate your endeavor. The ones where self-worth is measured in likes and too few means you’re not pretty enough, you’re not “swole” enough, you’re not good enough.
Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors” was released in February 2013 as part of The 20/20 Experience. In its bridge, Timberlake belts, “With your hand in my hand and a pocket full of soul / I can tell you there’s no place we couldn’t go / Just put your hand on the glass / I’m here tryin’ to pull you through.” It’s a usage of dual apostrophe, as while Timberlake addresses the lyrics both to a lover—perhaps his wife, Jessica Biel—the music video suggests an interaction with a literal mirror. Ambiguous, also, is what constitutes the “pocket full of soul.”
In 2017, the biggest slot machines in the world don’t only reside in Vegas. They’re in your pocket. Facebook has over 2 billion monthly active users; Instagram, 800 million; Google+ 3 or 4 dozen.¹ Rather than gambling money, though, you’re throwing out time, energy, and self-esteem. Does it really mean that much to get a virtual “like” from your crush? And what makes you more than an analytic, when sites like Facebook brag about manipulating the emotions and mental states of their own users?² Despite public backlash, Mark Zuckerberg’s creation doubled down with a new terms of service allowing Facebook to scan how you surf the Internet, the apps you use, and your physical location in order to target advertising. It was January 2015, and there was no way to opt out.
FanDuel tightropes a thin line when it comes to creating—and advertising—their contests. While it’s important to have some autonomy over the results—both for padding egos and fighting lawsuits—a big component of the company’s marketing centers around the idea that an “Average Joe” can simply pick a few players and come out big. A 2015 promotion included a player who “deposited a total of $35 on FanDuel and won over $2 million,” as if that could be you if you just have the right feeling Alvin Kamara is going off this week.
Although mirrors reflect, they can also distort. The same object can look completely different depending on the angle, the lighting, the perspective. In a sense, it makes it frivolous for us to label—as Timberlake journeys through a mirror maze, he admits, “We’re making / Two reflections into one.” We want to measure and answer and quantify and yet sometimes that isn’t possible.
Perhaps the decision on whether to join social media or not has become a prisoner’s dilemma. The classic game theory problem is described by William Poundstone as follows: “Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They hope to get both sentenced to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to: betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent. The offer is:
● If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison.
● If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa).
● If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge).”
The biggest inherent difference with social media in contrast to the standard prisoner’s dilemma is the number of players—a lack of defined outcomes secondarily apparent—but the overall concept stands forth. You know you’re going to be turned in, because those millions and billions of profiles already exist, so it becomes almost impossible not to join—who wants to be ostracized in jail? As more people find their way out, it becomes even harder to stay in—eschewing the snitching of hopping on board yourself—for the ones remaining. Except it should be reversed; social media is the jail, and we’re all stuck in it.
In January 2015, Daily Fantasy Sports site FanDuel approached MIT professor Anette Hosoi, asking her to analyze the results of contests from up to a million players to determine whether the company’s offerings could be constituted games of skill. The query needed support for People by Schneiderman v. Fanduel, Inc. “New York's state constitution, Art. 1 § 9, prohibits gambling unless a specific exception applies. N.Y. Penal Law § 225.00(2) defines ‘gambling’ as staking or risking something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or future contingent event not under the person's control or influence with the hope of receiving something of value if a certain outcome occurs.”
I closed a Facebook tab shortly before beginning this piece, in fact. I’ve wagered at least a couple hundred dollars on sites like FanDuel. And there are nearly a dozen mirrors in our apartment, which really isn’t blessed with wall space to begin with.
The balance of skill vs. chance is crucial in creating a popular yet legal game. Games that are too skill-driven, like chess, aren’t played for money. Add in too much randomness, however—such as in poker or blackjack or roulette—and you’re going to need the extra expense of a flight to Nevada.
If we finish out Alice Morse Earle’s quote³ —adapted into “Mirrors”—we’re left prepared to unwrap the day and see what it brings. “Yesterday is history / Tomorrow’s a mystery.” I’m not sure if I do that, though, or if we even do that.
Anette Hosoi’s report came back conclusive. Against intelligent simulations, actual user lineups won 86% of the time in NFL and 95% of the time in NBA and 73% of the time in MLB and 68% of the time in NHL. Data suggests that skill persists and increases over time, with user skill playing a more significant role than in poker and even in comparison to the actual games of each sport. In fact, it turns out that there might be too much skill involved in Daily Fantasy Sports, or at least not enough balance throughout the site’s payouts. A report found that for the first half of the 2015 MLB season, 1.3% of players won 91% of the contest profits. Sure, they bet larger and more frequently, putting in 40% of the entry fees, but the ultimate result remains staggering. If you’re not part of that 1.3%, you’re probably just feeding into their winnings.
In the end, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman signed a settlement with FanDuel, and a bill formally legalizing and regulating DFS contests in New York passed in August 2016. Player prices and sports-book lines lived another day.⁴
But maybe the direction of the lines on the carpet doesn’t matter when they’re covered in smoothie.
1. Google+ actually sits around 110 million, apparently.
2. Facebook did a study on “massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,” in which the platform manipulated the feeds of over 689,000 users in order to analyze the effects on the users’ posts and reactions. If this is what they’re telling us, you really have to wonder what else is being experimented that we aren’t told about…
3. Earle’s original quote: “The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present.”
4. To be clear, sports-books are not allowed in New York as sports betting falls under the category of being an event not under a person’s control. Regardless, the win for DFS—especially in such a big state—functioned as a big win for fantasy sports and similar games. Player prices refer to the “budget” you have on sites like FanDuel, where better players are more expensive and the idea is to find value based on the pricing. That’s where most of the “skill” comes in.
Works Cited
FanduelVideos. “2015 FanDuel One-Week Fantasy Football Commercial.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Aug. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnvTXsqLxoE.
“Alice Morse Earle > Quotes.” Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/44874.Alice_Morse_Earle.
Booth, Robert. “Facebook reveals news feed experiment to control emotions.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 29 June 2014, www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds.
“Daily Fantasy Sports Is Back In Business In New York: Cuomo Signs Bill.” Legal Sports Report, 4 Aug. 2016, www.legalsportsreport.com/10890/ny-enacts-dfs-law/.
“For daily fantasy sports operators, the curse of too much skill.” SportsBusiness Daily | SportsBusiness Journal | SportsBusiness Daily Global, www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2015/07/27/Opinion/From-the-Field-of-Fantasy-Sports.aspx.
Hosoi, Anette. “AFFIDAVIT OF PROFESSOR ANETTE (PEKO) HOSOI.” Daily Fantasy Sports 911, Supreme Court of the State of New York, 23 Nov. 2015, www.dailyfantasysports911.com/sites/default/files/AFFIDAVIT%20OF%20PROFESSOR%20ANETTE%20(PEKO)%20HOSOI.pdf.
justintimberlakeVEVO. “Justin Timberlake - Mirrors.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Mar. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=65&v=uuZE_IRwLNI.
“Justin Timberlake – Mirrors.” Genius, 11 Feb. 2013, genius.com/Justin-timberlake-mirrors-lyrics.
Kramer, Adam D. I., and Jamie E. Guillory. “Experimental evidence of massive-Scale emotional contagion through social networks.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, National Acad Sciences, www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full.
Metro.co.uk, Rob Waugh for. “Facebook has changed its privacy settings TODAY - here's what you need to know.” Metro, 30 Jan. 2015, metro.co.uk/2015/01/30/facebook-has-changed-its-privacy-settings-today-heres-what-you-need-to-know-5042856/.
Poundstone, William. Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb. Anchor, 1993.
Swaminathan, Nikhil. “Are Fantasy Sports Really Gambling? - Issue 44: Luck.” Nautilus, 19 Jan. 2017, nautil.us/issue/44/luck/are-fantasy-sports-really-gambling-rp.
“The Prisoner's Dilemma in detail.” OpenLearn, The Open University, 30 Aug. 2006, www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/philosophy/the-prisoners-dilemma-detail.
“Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites and Apps [November 2017].” DreamGrow, 5 Dec. 2017, www.dreamgrow.com/top-15-most-popular-social-networking-sites/.
Wright, Joesph. “FanDuel, DraftKings Play for Keeps in N.Y. Courtroom.” FanDuel, DraftKings Play for Keeps in N.Y. Courtroom | Bloomberg BNA, www.bna.com/fanduel-draftkings-play-n57982063993/.
Peter Gofen is an 18-year-old senior at the Latin School in Chicago, Illinois. He has a passion for crafting words, and his YouTube channel--PeterJaguars—has over 2.5 million video views. Peter will be attending Stanford University following his graduation this June and looks forward to continuing his writing career in college.