Taxi Marathoners

I grow up witnessing hundreds of people around me talking about lotteries. Some of them are frequent purchasers while some, although proclaiming that "I only buy occasionally for entertainment purposes", are still mystically fervent to participate in any conversation about lotteries.  

Those conversations typically consist of the following: 

• The amount of cash prizes if one wins
• An astronomical amount of hearsay stories about a person's friend's friend's cousin's friend's neighbour winning a 100,000 bucks of cash prize last month (Normally being received with a huge "Woah" by the listeners)
• A person's almost-winning attempt 3 weeks ago (E.g.: He/she bought the number "677839" and the winner number turned out to be "677838") and him/her claiming it as a near-miss like how Neymar missed a penalty kick

The conversations almost never entail the following:

• Who was the founders of the lottery companies and how they were founded
• The opportunity cost of buying lotteries 
• Expected values
• Things that are more interesting than lotteries in an order of magnitude (Arts and sciences etc) 

Earlier today I suddenly concocted a ludicrous but accurate metaphor for lottery buying, especially aimed at the winners of lotteries (since they are the "role models" of most lotteries buyers):

Buying lotteries and winning money = calling a taxi and having it to fetch you to the finishing line in a marathon race

A NSFW version would be:

Buying lotteries and winning money = getting orgasm or ejaculate semen (for males) without any foreplay

Not only that, the worse thing is there are many people who rarely or even never win a lottery despite thousands of attempts and "investments" in their whole life. They are the colloquial "unlucky gamblers". They turned out to be poorer than people who have never purchased a lottery at all.

Applying this fact into my metaphor, it means that there are people who took taxis in a marathon race and turned out to be slower than a person who ran using legs! 

Or the NSFW version would be: People who aimed for orgasm or semen ejaculation turned out to be less euphoric than people who don't want orgasm!

Lottery prize, like orgasm or finishing line, is a bitch. You can only have it when you don't want it.