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At least you have to go a casino for gambling. Short form video wastes your entire life away.

"just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. people wasting time staring at screens is the prevalent problem of today. with TV it was not as bad because there was/is only one in a room so it becomes shared experience. phones are worse.

Go a little further. Think about "how." How do slot machines get people to waste their money for hours-on-end? How does TikTok use short-form video to get people to scroll for hours-on-end? What is the mechanism?

"just" waste people's time? their most valuable resource?

It's OK to waste time. All art and entertainment is a waste of time. Most of what people do on HN is waste time. Arguably anything besides eating and procreative sex is a waste of time.

Sure, everything is just like a anything else. Rick and Morty is my favorite show too

Case in point - your comment was a waste of your time to write and a waste of my time to read, yet here we both are.