That big gray monster, this mass co-opting culture of yours and mine, the same thing that ate up the '60s, punk, hip-hop and Tolkien, is eating up poker. It has given poker as much glitz as Jessica Simpson. And it is a sad thing. We, as poker-playing UW-Madison students, should be conscious of this drastic change in a storied American tradition, because it shows just how much mass pop culture shapes us.
Poker has always been as distinctly American as Ford trucks and napalm. Invented by thieves on Mississippi riverboats, it became the game of the Wild West. Poker was the other, ugly face of the Western coin, where the opportunity of Manifest Destiny drowned itself in whiskey and gunslinger poker-studs like Wild Bill Hickock stalked. America imagines it is still the nation of the West, so of course we play poker.
Poker's old subculture had blue-collar grit; the bottom-feeders, the downtrodden and the addicted gambled their booty and savings. The old sub-culture was a stream of Americana that reminded us dreamers that the dream doesn't always work out.
However, as poker's recent surge in popularity shows, something is changed. Poker is no longer the game of auto-factory fathers and insurance salesmen going out to play on Saturday nights only to storm home drunk and angry to tots and wife at 3 a.m.
TV now features poker as glamorous sport: \World Poker"" tour players sit under strobe lights in front of studio audiences. John Negreanu, one of the best, is a textbook metrosexual. A rank novice, the much-abused actor Ben Affleck, won the California state poker title. Wild Bill is rolling in his grave.
Beyond cable TV, the Internet has changed poker from a guys'-night-out staple to a video game. E-casinos like Party Poker provide e-games for any soul willing to mainline the virtual pit-boss into his or her personal checking account.
In short, poker has been commercialized. It is gone the way of Las Vegas. Just like Vegas lost its Cosa Nostra flavor when the CEOs rolled in, poker has lost its subculture grime. Poker is no longer the dominion of folks on the social fringe. In its newly packaged form, poker is suitable for mass consumption.
That fact is stunningly evident here on campus. UW-Madison students are eating poker up. Kids who did not know ""big slick"" from ""the nuts"" a year ago are now gambling with their parents' money for 20 hours a week. UW-Madison students, for better or worse, are not alone. According to a recent CNN story, poker is a fad on campuses nationwide.
This commercialization and co-optation of poker is not necessarily a good thing. Thanks to the Internet, poker has contributed to the social isolation of modern times. Then again, there is nothing wrong with losing five bucks to your friends over Leinenkugel's and cards.
There is precious little that we UW-Madison students can do to change poker back. But at least we can be conscious that a raw tradition has been bastardized and co-opted by mass culture. That's important, because mere consciousness of the change can help us determine if this new, commercialized gambling is characteristic of our generation.
Gambling, by any measure, is not a flattering characteristic. It ranks right down there with our MTV-inspired predilection for Cancun. That is not to say our generation is particularly hedonistic when compared with other generations' baggage.
Rather, it is sad. If gambling is characteristic of our generation, then it merely points out that to a great degree, this generation is defined by the dictates of a clutching and boring mass culture that we have surprisingly little power to shape.
