Sunday Essays #3: It's All So Unserious Now (and that's ok)

Polymarket, politics, and payouts.

From the sudden prominence of prediction markets and the constant integration of meme culture and crypto, this write up is a semi-serious dive into the wholly unserious, and what it means for our lives (and wallets)

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Let’s start off hot:

Betting the Rent on the Politics of Developing Nations

Prediction markets have become all the rage lately.

Last week, 60 Minutes profiled Shayne Coplan, the NYU tech wiz founder of Polymarket, a giant in the brand-new prediction market space.

Prediction markets have become wildly popular, even as they’re still in their Wild West/Gold Rush phase despite increasing steps towards full-fledged legitimacy (the waitlist for their U.S. app opened this week).

Polymarket (and their primary competitor, Kalshi) offer the standard wagers you would expect: who wins the Super Bowl, ‘26 World Cup odds, etc.

There’s also the innocuous and peculiar:

However, prediction market cultured has started to shine a light upon (and completely gamify) things that, up until recently, didn’t occupy any space in the average American brain at all.

Two of the highest-grossing betting pools on Polymarket involve…the political instability or elections of developing nations:

Not to be insensitive, but even 5 or 6 years ago?

The average American likely wasn’t even thinking about Honduras or Venezuela, let alone holding a vested interest in their political climates.

Now?

A $39MM pool (at time of writing) combined weighs in the balance on a medium that was an entirely foreign concept just a few years ago.

The crazy wagers don’t end there:

This is where things get really interesting, albeit ghoulish in the same moment.

It’s a blatant ethical conundrum- wagering ones hard-earned money on events that pretty much guarantee a loss of human life.

(The 60 Minutes spot- to their credit- did bring this point up too re: wagering on California wildfire durations)

This is where the “unseriousness” comes in, and it also ties into an overarching thesis I’ve had since I began writing on Substack (basically, our lives are turning into Ready Player One at an alarming rate, and there’s no stopping it).

We’ve taken the humanity out of ourselves in search of financial gain.

Legitimate violence, quests for power, or the social media habits of our billionaire class overlords have become spectacle, digital bread and circuses for our own potential gain and amusement.

It sets a strange precedent, much akin to the SkyNet machines taking over in Terminator- what happens when the new tech runs wild?

(Hopefully it doesn’t end up like that, but still)

Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, prediction market culture was inevitable.

Look at your average NFL Sunday today compared to ten years ago.]

A decade ago? Your friend shows up, clad in a Jets jersey (poor thing) and pulls for his team.

Now? The players on the field are his digital and financial mercenaries:

“I need this guy to go over 80 yards, I need more than 3 punts by the 4th quarter”

The ubiquity of sports gambling (which really should be an entire topic for another day) walked so that prediction market culture could run.

We’ve lost whatever innocence we had left through the proliferation of betting culture.

Let’s look at what could happen tomorrow:

The Eagles can win on Monday Night Football, and Israel/Palestine could pop off again.

Again, to use the lens of ten years ago, the expected reaction would be:

“Oh, that’s terrible they’re fighting again..and didn’t the Eagles win last year? It’s time for somebody else.”

Now?

“I had Saquon Over 100 yards and I had 0.5 ETH on rockets hitting Gaza, so I had a pretty good day!”

It’s the new normal, while simultaneously being anything but.

Meme Coin Mania

Crypto is getting nuked at the moment, but if you’ve been reading awhile, you know we’re heavy in that game over here.

Much like Polymarket, the crypto/meme coin trenches couldn’t possibly care less for decorum.

I actually personally made a little windfall at the end of ‘24 on $PNUT, a meme coin (with absolutely zero utility) named after the pet squirrel euthanized by New York State.

There’s a meme coin for anything and everything.

An untimely celebrity death?

A viral embarrassing moment? (don’t look at what coin jumped when Tyson’s boxing shorts slipped when fighting Jake Paul..)

Some girl goes viral on the “SEC Burnerverse” for some questionable conduct?

There’s a meme coin for it all.

It’s another example of the terminally online x financial gain duo meeting opportunism x absurdity.

The insensitivity and secondhand effect be damned.

Now’s No Time for Moral Grandstanding

In no way, shape, or form am I condemning either of these things.

(I just told you guys I’m a meme coin degenerate)

I’ve used these tools to profit in my own life (though sadly I did break an 8 PPV main event win streak last night with Piotr Yan’s upset of Long Island’s own Merab Dvalishvili), and it’s in my opinion that you’d be silly not to.

Should you stay away from betting on global bloodshed?

Of course. We’re believers in karma over here.

However, prediction markets allow for each and every person to profit off of their unfair advantage.

This isn’t 1998 where you have to call off a payphone (for opsec) to some Paulie Walnuts-esque character standing outside an OTB to get your picks in before the 1PM kick-off’s.

(Also idk why I’m talking like I knew what that was like, I was literally a child)

Anyway- unfair advantages.

Sure, you might not know if the Bills defense can hold off Drake Maye, or if Gaethje will able to overwhelm Paddy Pimblett in the next UFC main event (fwiw, he will).

You might have an inclination as to when the next album from your favorite artists drops, or how an election from a small nation you have relatives in goes, or what happens to your favorite character on the show you’re streaming.

The chances are there to exploit the knowledge of whatever it is you obsess about.

Why not use it?

The Bigger Picture (and The Great Liberation)

It’s pretty tempting to see what is going in modern financial and online culture and want to bury your head in the sand, especially if you don’t already have skin in the game.

That’s understandable, but you’d be losing sight of the bigger picture in the process, and we don’t want that.

You don’t have to download a Phantom wallet and buy Franklin the Turtle coin or wager whether “AI” or NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang will be Time’s Person of the Year.

Rather, look at it on a macro scale.

We’ve become a nation of scrollers and brainrotters, treating headlines like moneylines and creating digital money effigies of the deceased and distressed.

We retreat into parasocial relationships and streaming services as a quasi-refuge, quelling the effects of absurd digital life with..more absurd digital life.

I would say that “normal” is shrinking, but I actually think that normal has all but ceased to exist.

Our Unserious World = A Release Valve

Once you accept that normalcy has been shown the door, the whole game gets lighter.

The pressure dissolves.

If everything (markets, politics, culture, even our own coping mechanisms) has become memed and gamified, then the only losing move is pretending we’re still living in some buttoned up, rule-bound society where everyone is watching and judging your every move.

They’re not.

They’re doomscrolling, checking odds, checking charts, and posting anonymously in TikTok comment sections.

(I’ll never support dancing on graves, but the death of the “permission structure” has been glorious to watch.)

So post the content, write the blog or the tweet thread, start the side hustle, whatever it may be.

Worrying about optics or public perception (save for truly insane behavior) is a fool’s errand.

What’s the worst that can happen?

You’re looked at as weird, strange, a rule-breaker, terminally online, or an outlier?

As we head into 2026, that just means you fit right in.

You can bet on that.

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Be well 🫶🏻

-John Abbate

7.12.2025