From the BBC, this interesting report:
"Las Vegas illustrates just how varied casino design can be - pyramids, medieval castles, circuses - pretty much "anything goes", says Paul Steelman.
"But there is one iron rule, he tells me - no mirrors….
"[C]asinos are all about illusion . You go to a casino to feel like James Bond. The last thing a casino owner wants is for you to catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Then you will see your sagging gut or the pimples on your face and, in an instant, the illusion explodes and you stop playing."
Keeping people drugged on fantasy makes money for casinos but is hardly the recipe for rational consumer judgments.
I hope my colleague Mark White will weigh in on the obvious paternalism issue – should government require casinos to install mirrors every 100 feet? And force a gambler to make eye contact with himself once an hour?
That's at least as obvious as requiring restaurants to list food ingredients and forcing people to read them; and it's less freedom constraining than prohibiting consumers from supersizing their Pepsis. J
Kidding aside, there is something intriguing about the idea that we cannot face ourselves in a mirror and keep doing what we should not.
[Photo: http://images.google.com/imgres?q=carnival+mirror+distortion&num=10&hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1410&bih=743&tbm=isch&tbnid=ba1lAEnxoa_h8M:&imgrefurl=http://fun-house-mirrors.funnyfunny12.no-ip.org/&docid=WJ8MpXDkC5suRM&imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d5WU-iaXMCQ/T0hDy1JKrHI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/Mjp-dbi6LA/s1600/Fun_House_Mirror.jpg&w=473&h=480&ei=ft5oUNiDCquv0AHxsYGoBQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=976&vpy=184&dur=296&hovh=226&hovw=223&tx=125&ty=147&sig=113712965852925580413&page=2&tbnh=162&tbnw=179&start=32&ndsp=30&ved=1t:429,r:5,s:32,i:201]
Comments