The Dividend Cafe - Markets as a Video Game

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Today's Post - In this episode of Dividend Cafe, host David Bahnsen delves into the concept of the gamification of financial markets. Bahnsen critiques the modern trend of treating investing as a form of entertainment, likening it to video games and sports betting. He references Neil Postman's book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' to highlight how societal shifts towards entertainment and quick gratification have impacted serious institutions, including financial markets. Bahnsen warns of the risks involved in trivializing capital allocation and market behaviors, emphasizing that the serious nature of investing should not be compromised by amusement-based tendencies. He concludes by cautioning against the influence of grifters exploiting this trend and stresses the importance of maintaining sobriety and wisdom in financial decisions. 00:00 Introduction to the Gamification of Markets 00:32 Current Market Events and Distractions 02:04 Neil Postman's Prophetic Insights 04:56 The Rise of Gamified Investing 08:40 The Serious Implications of Market Gamification 14:12 Conclusion: The Dangers of Treating Markets as Games Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

Welcome to the Dividend Cafe, weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends in your understanding of economic life. Hello and welcome to the Dividend Cafe. I'm your host, David Bonson, and today we are going to talk about the gamification of markets. The idea that investing and being in financial markets has an entertainment component that we, as a entertainment component that we, as, part of our societal addiction to amusement are doing something in the way we think about investing that I consider to be dangerous and problematic. Allow me to say that I resisted the temptation this week to devote the Dividendon Cafe to additional talk about the earlier in the week hubbub in Europe, around Greenland, around Denmark, around the president's tariff threats that preceded his talk in Davos,

all of those things that led to a big market drop at the beginning of the week, and then after his retreat from those threats, a rally later in the week, I honestly have nothing else to say about it. It was addressed. I think everything that I said was thorough and covered the topics at hand. And as much as I'm sure there will be more developments in various tentacles, to the story. I really want to stay focused on what the subject to this week's Dividing Cafe was intended to be, which is, as I said, this notion about markets as video games. And I want to first say

that this is a Dividy Cafe where I'm cheating a little bit, that while I believe there's a profoundly important lesson for investors in this subject, I am also really speaking to a broader cultural malady. And as I wrote the Dividend Cafe this week, what ended up inspiring a lot of my writing that was not necessarily in my preparatory thoughts as I conceptually put the Dividendon Cafe together mentally over the last several days was Neil Postman's famous book in, it was either 1984-1985, I believe it was actually 85, amusing ourselves to. death. And not only is posted a very interesting thinker and cultural critic and someone that I've enjoyed reading in a lot of different contexts, but this book was profoundly important for this

underlying message that now 40 plus years later, it's kind of surreal to think about. Someone wrote a book suggesting that our societal transition to television is such a heavy technological medium that had become so central in American society was leading not just to a sort of dumbing down of the people, but as more serious institutions had to compete for the attention of those people that were now getting used to more lowbrow entertainment, quicker delivery of entertainment, cheaper laughs and thrills, that it was leading to a much more amusement-centered, politics, a consumer-centered church, the kind of more serious fears of society were capitulating to this trend. And that was actually what I think Postman's bigger point was. Yes, that the people

were amusing themselves to death, but also that the gravely important institutions were capitulating and facilitating. I believe that in a lot of ways, now, first of all, that's back when like people were watching Cosby's show on Thursday nights, okay? That he wrote that before teenagers spent 13 hours a day on TikTok or before the streaming wars and before social media, phones, just the massive change in what screen technology means to society now versus then. It's really incomprehensible, almost like he didn't write it as a 1985 screed, but a prophetic 2025 screed. And yet, What we I think are dealing with is that societal issue that leads to a heavy focus on speed and amusement and really downplays judgment and wisdom and contemplation and analysis.

And posting out an agenda, it just happens to be when I share, but he believed that the printed word forced people mentally to analyze deeper, that reading was fundamentally different than viewing and listening. And I think that there's a lot of truth to all of that. The different sensory intakes have different processing mechanisms associated with it. And so other people can debate that stuff. I don't want to bore you. But when it comes to investing markets, I would argue that this has moved really quickly in the last several years

where the same dynamic has entered the world of investing. And a lot of people made hay at the time when Robin Hood came out with an app and people could trade stocks. and then they would get like confetti that would go off on their screen or you do a certain number of trades and you'd get visual or auditory stimulus. It does feel benign in the grand scheme of things. I'm not a fan of it. And a lot of my reason is not because I think it's encouraging bad behavior per se as much as I feel like it's just treating adults like seven-year-olds. But the infanilization factor notwithstanding, it does seem fair to at least say as symptomatic. of what has now become much more serious when you look at the meme stock craze.

When you look at NFT trading, non-fungible tokens, when you look at a whole bunch of crypto-oriented shenanigans. And some of these Reddit and Discord chat boards, there's a sense in which, first of all, a social community becomes a very important part of this investing process, the amusement, the trolling, the entertainment. entertainment. And you look at the video game dynamics of culture, nearly $200 billion industry. You look at the sports betting element of culture, which is not that big yet, but it will be. It's over $120 billion now. Massive. And some of those sociological phenomena associated with video games and sports betting coming into investing.

And then, much like Postman wrote about 40 years ago, the societal institutions to compete ended up altering their delivery. And politics became much more of a WWF sport. And the church became much more consumerist, largely because that's what they were having to do to compete for the attention spans and interest of people. I think that investment products end up getting formed to meet this. sort of entertainment agenda. You end up seeing these single day options and like I said, these kind of silly NFT, the token things, but the behaviors, the people could think that GameStop thing a few years ago was serious and a big short selling attack on short sellers or whatnot. But I mean, there is a real celebration of behavior that is not rooted to some

form of risk management or capital allocation judgment. It's rooted to being funny or to being provocative. It is, again, has an entertainment component that you would normally associate with video games and sports betting. And I think that many of you listening right now might say, yeah, David, I guess that stuff happens. We see it. It's out there. Maybe you think it's smaller. Maybe you think it's bigger. But you would be in a fair zone to question. why you should care, why I should care. You're not doing it. I'm not doing it. Why does it matter? And there is a sense in which I think that's legitimate that other people not taking their money seriously doesn't cause me to take my money unsuriously or your money unsuriously. And yeah,

I do have a sort of moral sense in which I do care about other people making bad decisions, but it certainly doesn't affect me economically in a direct sense. But here is where I believe we need to think a little bit deeper about it. The conflation of markets as video games and the investing world has, I think, blurred some lines. I believe that the Overton window has changed to where now various products and behaviors become normalized that they only could ever see light of day because of this gamification of markets. And so the senses get doled. Judgment gets numbed, and behaviors end up entering the fray that can exacerbate bubbles, that can desensitize wise decision making. And when the objectives move to a zone of entertainment and humor and social community

and outside of zones of capital allocation and matching investments, solutions to one's own financial goals. You know, these are processes that we take seriously, that you take seriously, that a whole bunch of financial professionals take seriously. And yet what I guess I would say is to the extent that we go long enough with this amusing ourselves to death in financial markets in the investing world, I believe that it will become more democratically, more distributed across the society. And unfortunately, the sports betting world and market betting, right now people can use different vocabulary to describe them,

but they're cut from the same cloth. And the blurring of these lines cannot end well. And I do believe that there's a broader cultural message. And a lot of people think it's merely the sinisterism of technology. Technology exacerbates it. The access is far greater. But there's a deeper moral rot, and it isn't new. People that like have fun wanting to make a quick buck and maybe even quit their jobs so they can go trade dog tokens or meme stocks. I have a quote in diviningcafe.com today in the written article. The reason I put it in there was to really make clear that I'm not suggesting this underlying phenomena is totally new, that I came across a quote that was in the New York Times in October of 1929 with a Wall Street veteran just flat out saying, one of the good things

about the stock market crash is there's a whole bunch of merchants and farmers and people who would normally be wage earners at jobs that are sitting around trading stocks and now they're going to have to go back to work. And that was 1929. And I think that a hundred years later, There is more widespread activity. It's gotten sillier. And I sort of tongue in cheek said, yeah, I mean, it doesn't totally repeat today from what that the 1929 quote alluded to, but it rhymes. But now you're talking about like people buying stocks on purpose of companies that are

headed to bankruptcy. And the CEO of the company doing an interview on a like Reddit or Discord chat room without wearing pants because it's funny while they're trading dog tokens. These are all things that I put in the different cafe to be funny or to make the point, but I didn't make them up. I couldn't make that stuff up. You think I have the creativity to come up with this? These are real life things.

And we're not talking about some joker put a hundred grand bet on something. We're talking about just massive amounts of capital. And all the while me seeing it bleed into a mentality. of markets, that it's a game. And capital allocation is fundamentally the deployment of debt and equity into investments that underlie the production of goods and services. And all the while, that means that there are companies doing things. Then there are investors who, from the return on invested capital, have their own financial

goals met. And that two-step process that defines both market function itself and then, and how we benefit from market function in our own lives as investors on a practical basis. This is very serious stuff. And no one's talking about you can't have a good laugh in between or whatever. My point is in the decision making of capital allocation conflating it with what amounts to video games and sports betting is dangerous. And yet now it is exacerbating and moving quickly. and I believe undermining a wisdom and sobriety necessary for people to be successful investors.

Most of the people get burned by it will learn. They will grow up. They may be broke. They may not. It will play out in a certain way. But I would more say, let's not all be worried about that friend of ours who's getting a little too much confetti on his Robin Hood app. For ourselves, let's just make sure that we are. avoid the mentality of believing that this is gambling, that this is a game, that the real

objective is then to go address moments of social alienation by finding the camaraderie of other people on a chat board that think all this stuff is funny too. The financial markets are serious. They are also a major blessing that enhance quality of lives for billions of people. but the gamification of markets right now will not only hurt a lot of risk takers who touch the stove and deserve to get their hand burned a bit, but it's at risk of touching others if we're not serious about what is going on, cautious. And when I say cautious, not just about our own human nature, not just about the societal moment of Neil Postman's warning. And finally, my concluding thought, cautious about what it attracts, which are grifters, which are those that are perfectly

willing to take advantage of the moment, that for every person out there who thinks they're being funny, buying a dog token online or piling on in a short rate or this or that or what have you with day options and so forth and so on, there's someone out there who's not the patsy, who's playing you. They are compelling and they are effective communicators. and they're a con artist. And it's systemic because when a society decides to celebrate investing as video games, there's someone else out there who knows this is the golden era to go run a grift. And I want everyone to be careful about that in this moment.

Ideally, I'd love everyone to not amuse themselves to death. Find a bit more, shall we say, time and place, seasonality for how we think about the spheres of our life. I can't fix everything Postman wrote about 40, 41 years ago. But when it comes to financial markets, they're not video games and they're not video games for a reason. And to that end, we work. Thanks for listening.

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