Las Vegas is like if enshittification were a city. The whole economic model was to make everything cheap and easy so that people would show up to gamble. Subsidize the flights, the hotels, the food, the entertainment, etc. and just make it up on the other side with people throwing money away on gambling. It worked for decades. Then a bunch of morons went "but what if we also tried to make money on all that stuff, too?" so they started getting rid of the deals and the freebies, they jacked up prices and found ways to upsell, they lowered the already-middling quality on everything, and they presumably made even more money for a few years.

But now there's no reason to go there in the first place. Almost anything you'd want to do in Las Vegas you could do better and for less money somewhere else. Of course young people aren't going to show up.

The younger generation just gambles on their phones now. DraftKings and FanDuel have created a whole new generation of gambling addicts, but they've lost too much of their money to go to Vegas even if they wanted to

Loss Vegas

I'm kind of surprised they didn't say "Millennials are killing Vegas".

soon the only tourists will be fans of fallout: new vegas. because of woke

It's probably gambling apps doing that actually, there's so fucking many of them

wait, they made a city from fallout new vegas into a real thing?

Give me enough money that I can afford to gamble it away :shrug-outta-hecks:

Every photo of Vegas scream to me: "That's aesthetic that an American boomer loves", I don't know how that attract the younger generation, even excluding all the monetary problems.

Punk kids will never know the joy of being an obese elderly mobster who flies out to meet his goomah in vegas and drop peyote and muse about all the people he's killed.

Let's also not forget that Canadians have by and large stopped travelling to The Burger Reich, I'm sure that hasn't been helping either.

Young people have their gacha waifus to scratch that gambling itch

They turned stocks into a casino and then added shit like crypto, tech startups, and sports betting. All on your phone.

I need a Kelly comic where we get to see Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Joe Trafficante crying from heaven. Put-upon casino-goers looking forlornly at the moths flying out of their wallet, unable to cover his exorbitant bar tab, while "Aspiring Content Creators" are driving past the casinos recording tiktoks with their dang cell phones

Yeah this thing called internet, pretty powerful shit where everyone can gamble to lose instead of going all the way to Vegas and gamble to lose.

Why do these dumbasses never take it up with porky? remember? The guy who was going to do all the consumer spending for us?

Perhaps he should be taxed more since he isn’t consuming like he’s supposed to

Put the mob in charge of Vegas again, they ran it better

Vegas is fun and all but now it’s like super expensive to go. It used to be that it was cheap and then you spend all the money on gambling. Now is ridiculously expensive and then you have no gambling money

The city where you get blackout drunk and get married to a stranger? That Vegas?

Buddy, younger people just get blackout drunk and marry a stranger at the town/city hall these days. No-one has the money for a 20m^2^ chapel with an ordained Elvis impersonator anymore. Either that or just live with their polycule* and just not get married to a stranger you met day drinking alone on a weekday.

*Latest fad

Vegas is the worst city on earth and it’s not particularly close

I took a millennial vacation to Vegas this February. It wasn't a great vacation, but it was a pretty good vacation, and the weather was better than where I was coming from. There is a lot of spectacle to see free of charge (fountains, mountains, the sphere, the strip, Fremont St) and a lot to see that is pay-to-play (museums, performances, etc).

Vegas was a decent destination for food and activities (Tacotarian was so good). I was pleasantly surprised because I've been passing through the town for the better part of 30 years, and the 2025 version was the most holistic "maybe actually a city" version of Vegas I've seen. As EnsignRedshirt said, prices are fucking stupid now. Flights and hotels, historically very cheap purchases, are no longer so cheap you can't say no. I think I paid $300/night to stay at the "second nicest hotel in downtown".

I saw a recent tiktok where a resident was saying the major factor contributing to the decline is that retirees are the bread and butter of Vegas, and as their material conditions get worse, that group needs to cut costs, and their "low cost gambling vacation" is the first to go.

So, with the cheap attractions not so cheap and the main customer base turning away, Vegas needs to reinvent itself

Local catholic church here is doing its part to create young gamblers. They have a carnival every year and half of it is the typical carnival games where little kids just get their money taken. Those games hardly ever have anyone playing them. But toward the back you see the game ALL the kids AND their parents are playing. It's a game where you put dollars in wooden boxes that match odds to a color. Then once enough boxes have money in them the carnival person comes and puts the plexiglass cover down over them all and then throws a ball into a pit that has a bunch of colored cups. Whichever color cup the ball lands on wins and then they go around and add money to the boxes that won and take the rest of the money.

Kids sit there playing that for hours. Parents are there shelling out money and playing too while getting piss drunk. At a fucking church fundraiser carnival.

Most people are lucky to be able to have one big trip like that in their lifetime. I couldn't imagine cashing it in on something that shitty. On top of that, I have to lose a ton of money and get accosted on the streets by all kinds of drunks and people selling you stuff? No thanks.

I'm lucky I live somewhere that has a lot of affordable vacation choices if you're into the outdoors. We can take a couple of smaller getaways every year because we do it on the cheap.