Millennials and The Gambler: A Curious Phenomena

It’s Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito. It’s the reason David Hasselhoff is big in Germany. It’s a mystery.

All across the United States, Kenny Roger’s The Gambler is blaring from headphones, dorm rooms and funky apartments where Millennials gather.

You’ve heard them at the bars, at the beach and at the house party down the street. Arms entwined, hitting every nuance of every lyric, Millenials are belting it out, perhaps their most notable post-irony cultural contribution to date.

Marketers have been scrambling to exploit the phenomena. Plastic 80s-style Gambler costumes and campy knick knacks populate every Facebook update. Silver-haired clip-on beards, corny cowboy hats, western-style playing cards, even off-themed “Coward of the County” tshirts clothe every hipster, furnish every cubicle wall.

Cultural commentators have been scrambling to explain, blathering on about authenticity, broken childhood nostalgia and the transcendance of self through game playing. Blah, blah, blah.

The truth is a whole lot simpler. Millenials struggling to find their way can relate to a loser on a train bound for nowhere. Why not look to a grizzled cigarette-smoking wise man as a counter-intuitive father figure?

I think I can hear them now….

And in those final words they found an ace that they could keep.

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