Word: goffman
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Dates: during 1967-1967
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Perhaps the most persuasive theory is advanced by Sociologist Erving Goffman, who worked for a year in Las Vegas as a dealer. He describes gambling as a "meaning machine that grinds out random decisions very rapidly. Betting on the outcome transfers mere random decisions into fateful ones. This provides an essentially meaningless but exciting situation that allows people to read into the action whatever fantasies they want, to groove, to go crazy in an intensely personal way." In other words, gambling becomes life itself, made into whatever one wants...