He's an addict. All of us who have been addicted to something find a way to justify it in our minds. You could show him 7 years of "bank leaks" and total up the money spent from his account and he'd still say you were full of shit and he didn't spend that much. That's how the addict brain works.
Another part of it is how he prioritizes his finances: Most of us would prioritize necessities, then baseline savings, then fun stuff in that order. By contrast Phil has said in about as many words that he needs to remember to have fun now that he's an adult, and that takes precedence over savings/investments. This is how he wound up in severe CC debt in his teens/early twenties, it's how he had next to no cash on hand for a down payment on the Snort Fort in 2014, and it's how his bank account had a near-zero balance in 2021.
Not to mention literally having 0 in person friends to take up his free time
Someone gotta ask DSP if he knows what "Little strokes fell big oaks" or similar mean. I bet that's another expression that he's just taking literally "Uhm, duh, something about lumberjacks!"
I think in his mind, it's not that bad because of his complete lack of short term memory when it comes to anything that doesn't involve holding a grudge. He makes one small purchase for pulls, justifying it as not being that bad because it only costs X, but then he'll end up paying for more pulls a short time later, completely forgetting what he just spent on the previous one and using the same logic of it only costing a small amount. Phil more or less does this with any kind of expense, it's just most apparent with Gacha because of how predatory the transactions are.
That sort of thinking is how gacha games or games with lootboxes get so many people to spend so much money and why they're so predatory. Many companies have employed psychologists, data scientists etc. to optimize the way they squeeze their whales but it all hinges on the basic premise that people who are as dumb as pigshit won't realize that making a $100 purchase once or 20 $5 purchases done in quick succession costs the same. They're the kind of tards who'd say that a kilo of feathers is lighter than a kilo of iron. That's also why nanny states in Europe want to ban lootboxes on the premise of "think of da chillun" and why EA was fighting tooth and nail for it not to happen, it's a combination of kids' minds not being developed enough and not knowing the value of money to understand that multiple small purchases can add up and why kids end up draining their parents' finances on sportslop like NBA2k or FIFA.
To add to this, it's also why gacha games have so many different forms of currency. You aren't buying pulls; you are buying coins that allow you to do pulls. Money becomes an abstraction. You aren't supposed to have any idea of how much money you are spending.
soooooooo............................not the detractors after all? SHOCKING I SAY!
So this is two months late, sorry. But, thats not why this is in TOS. It is because selling accounts attaches real world values to this shit. And that starts running afoul of gambling laws. Every online game has shit like this. So it isn't the "does gacha equal gambling?" either. Like you can't sell MMO accounts either. I think because you have random drops in those games, so then you make those worth money.
I think there may some truth in it (at least to him) in that once he saw the debt that he had and his finances at that point in time he was like "fuck it" and just actively avoids looking at or dealing with his finances at all until he is forced to (i.e. declaring bankruptcy)
I think another part of it is that the moving debt is one of the only times in his life he realized a debt was a bad idea and made plans to pay it off. It was a flimsy plan (if memory serves it was literally "hope my income is high enough to cover the debt". . . right after a move to a pricier metro) but that's still more than he ever did for Champions, DoorDash, or even the Connecticut condo. So when he started to get in over his head (and this might have been as early as 2015 - remember that Panda getting a job was to keep them solvent), the moving debt was the one clear thing he could point to as the reason he was in trouble. His financial/planning/organizational skills are so poor the rest of the time that everything else somewhat blurred together and/or got rationalized as 'necessary'.
It's because his ego will never, ever let him sell that place - in his mind that condo is proof he's a success and leaving, even voluntarily, means the trolls win. Since selling the place is off the table, the only options he has left are refinancing/HELOC (which he can only do a few times in his life, the hit to his credit aside the house would need to appreciate by five-six figures for another one of those to make financial sense).
Hard disagree. He is COMPLETELY incapable of having any spare income. He made that money in his YouTube spamming days and still found a way to set it all on fire. He would buy a more expensive PC, he would probably pay an exorbitant amount of money to fix something minor in the khando. He would buy even more useless expensive shit for his setup or go all hellbent on winning every champions event.
