The vanishing “Quit Gambling Bar”

China, likes all big countries, has not only vibrant big cities, but also small county towns that no one cares about, exquisite and beautiful urban white-collar workers, and the bewildered unemployed.

But there may be one difference, that is, China’s population is too large, each group of population is large enough to support a subculture, and as long as there is enough time, these subcultures can develop quite well.

Therefore, some vulgar cultures that are incompatible with the mainstream culture occasionally appear in front of most Chinese people, especially on the Internet.

Among them, some contents have been discovered by foreign media and reported in detail, such as the famous “Sanhe Great God“. Today, we share a subcultural group similar to the “Sanhe Gods”, called “Brothers of Quit Gambling Bar”. And the place where these brothers used to be active is “Quit Gambling Bar”(戒赌吧).

There is some magical knowledge in Quit Gambling Bar, which is useful even to ordinary people. For example, people in Quit Gambling Bar say that when you travel to Macau, don’t spend money to book a hotel. As long as you find gamblers in Macau on the Internet, some of them are in urgent need of money and will sell you their hotel rooms cheaply-they don’t come out at all in the casino, so they don’t need to go back to the hotel.

They also share some experiences of homeless people. “Sanhe Great God”, “Rangers” and “Brothers of Quit Gambling Bar”, there is a great overlap between these groups. In the city, they share the location of high-end neighborhoods with each other and then go through the trash cans to look for leftovers from rich families.

Occasionally, some rich people throw away intact food that they haven’t eaten yet (they don’t even unpack it), so some homeless people can even enjoy a high-quality meal.

In the countryside, they share the way they live in the mountains and forests. They take pictures and record their lives, build thatched huts, catch centipedes and earthworms to satisfy their hunger, occasionally run down the mountain to steal things and go home to meet their families when it is safe to have a full meal.

Their most important wealth is their mobile phone and portable battery. They will carry a lot of portable batteries, such as seven to eight so that they can avoid showing up in the city for several days while avoiding creditors.

They go to shopping malls and other places to recharge for free and then use their mobile phones for entertainment. As soon as they find a new online loan, they immediately borrow money, withdraw cash, and then refuse to repay-anyway, they already have a lot of debt and no credit at all, so they don’t care to owe more.

When they get a little money from occasional short-time jobs or borrowing, they tend to gamble again. On the surface, Quit Gambling Bar is a place where people who have been addicted to gambling reflect, unite, fight to quit gamble together and return to normal lives. The earliest Brothers of Quit Gambling Bar is actually a kind of mutual help relationship, which is no different from the mutual help organizations that give up drugs and alcohol together.

But the difference is that Quit Gambling Bar is just a post bar, a social networking site, not an offline place based on communities and real people. When someone finds that there are a large number of gambling addicts in a place, business opportunities arise. Some unscrupulous underground gamblers, as well as some loan sharks, have appeared in Quit Gambling Bar one after another. Under their temptation, many people who originally wanted to quit gambling eventually returned to the old way of gambling, which is rather pathetic.

As a result, countless gamblers swore in Quit Gambling Bar that they would never gamble again. They record their lives and keep diaries for years, but most of them gamble again and again, then cry, swear, and then gamble again and again.

Many of the stories are very regrettable. For example, the famous “deliver dishes” joke on the Chinese Internet comes from Quit Gambling Bar. A poor gambler was penniless. One day, his elderly mother told him that the creditors would stop coming to the house for the time being and could find a way to pay their debts again. His mother gave him 50 yuan, saying that she earned it by delivering dishes in a small restaurant and asked him to use it first. His mother lamented that she was too old to make any more money.

This conversation is very broken-hearted. However, there are still many stories in Quit Gambling Bar, and the more famous ones, such as the Premier League in May 2012, are unforgettable to many gamblers. Before that game, a Brother of Quit Gambling Bar borrowed 600000 yuan from loan sharks to bet on Manchester United won the championship, and Manchester City lost or draw.

Every Premiership fan knows what happened that day. Lead the rival Queens Park Rangers F.C. At 1:0. Manchester City was chased by two goals in a row and was still behind at 1:2 in the 89th minute. However, in the 91st minute, Dzeko, who came off the bench, scored an equalizer with a header in the 91st minute, and another substitute Balotelli assisted Aguero in the 93rd minute. Manchester City performed miracles and won the Premier League Championship.

The gambler, who borrowed 600000 yuan from usury, recorded his mood in Baidu Tieba’s Manchester United Bar. Until the 91st minute, he could win more than 1 million yuan, but Aguero’s last shot in the 93rd minute cost him all. Many netizens have been watching his post that day, and when Aguero won the game, netizens became even more nervous than him.

Then the gambler disappeared online. At the beginning of the post, he said that if he lost the bet, he had no choice but to jump off a building and commit suicide.

In Quit Gambling Bar, the longest record of abstinence from gambling is only a year and a half. A year and a half later, the brother started gambling again and lost to penniless again. There is no doubt that Quit Gambling Bar does not play a role in quitting gambling, but makes more people corrupt.

At first, Quit Gambling Bar was just a bunch of gamblers encouraging each other. After becoming famous, most netizens on Quit Gambling Bar are just ordinary people who come to see jokes, and their speeches make real gamblers feel stressed and tortured. But whatever the people in Quit Gambling Bar, Quit Gambling Bar failed to help gamblers out of the abyss.

Baidu Tieba’s managers finally discovered the problem. So, Quit Gambling Bar was permanently suspended on June 29th, 2018. Many Brothers of Quit Gambling Bar, active in the post bar also disappeared in the eyes of netizens. Leaving the Internet, they are very similar to the lifestyle of the “Sanhe God” in reality. They take part-time jobs, don’t pay for meals, stay away from their families and society, wander, and try every means to find food.

But unlike Sanhe Gods, Sanhe Gods can settle down in this kind of life. Even in a strange environment where no one knows them, homeless people can stay for a period of time as long as they have food and water, or even go to Internet cafes to play games.

But these gamblers in Quit Gambling Bar tend to be saddled with high debts that cannot be paid off. They not only have to stay away from their families and hometown, but also avoid appearing anywhere for a long time, or they will be caught by creditors. Although the God of Sanhe is poor, he is secure at heart. Brothers of Quit Gambling Bar, on the other hand, can only live in fear.

To be fair, Quit Gambling Bar’s tragedy is not just about society. People who are addicted to gambling, if they take part in gambling again and again, or even borrow money to gamble, then there must be weaknesses in their own character. Some people say that even without the temptation of gamblers and usurers, it is easy for these people to switch from gambling to gambling because the Quit Gambling Bar is full of gambling stories, gambling skills, and gambling opportunities.

Unfortunately, this is indeed the reality. There are many famous sayings that come from Quit Gambling Bar, those which advise people to quit gambling are very narrow spread, but those which tempt people to gamble again are very widespread. These sentences are often rhyming and rhythmic in Chinese. In English, you can get a general idea of what they are saying:

Love to fight to win, dare to gamble to win money!

No child cries every day and no gambler loses every day.

Seize the opportunity can turn your bike into a motorcycle! Participate in gambling and turn a motorcycle into a jeep!

Don’t be afraid of the pain of losing in gambling, be afraid that you can’t gamble anymore.

If you want to be rich, make a big bet.

Wealth is derived from risk.

A horse cannot get fat without eating night grass, and a man cannot become rich without a windfall.

If you gamble for a minute, you will work ten years less.

As long as you don’t give up gambling, you can always find a way to solve the problem!

Small bets support your family, while big bets make you rich!

Perhaps you have seen these slogans in your country? Gambling is a terrible thing, and in most parts of China, this industry is illegal. Those rich gamblers tend to be active in Macau Bar instead of Quit Gambling Bar. The Macao Special Administrative Region is an area where gambling is legal in China. Gamblers in Macau tend to be very rich and they despise these people in Quit Gambling Bar.

As for the gamblers in Quit Gambling Bar, the gambling they take is not only illegal, but some are even fake at all, in a bet, they have to pay if they lose, but when they win, they can’t get the money out.

This is a fraud technique used by online gamblers: set up a gambling website, attract gamblers to sign up, and then let them gamble. Once gamblers win money and want to withdraw money from the balance, the website manager will make them wait patiently. The site disappeared when it cheated enough money. All the staff, no matter how you met, can no longer be contacted.

These gamblers are poor people. As the Chinese saying goes, poor people must have a hateful part. Their weak character and ignorant mind hurt them. But for their families, for Chinese society as a whole, these gamblers in Quit Gambling Bar are unforgettable tragedies.