I legit thought this was going to end up in a loop where there was never any donkey and it was the same scam the original farmer pulled. Dead non-existent donkeys all the way down.

Sorry, not a native speaker. What does it mean to "raffle somebody off"? (Edit: googling it says: "dispose of in a lottery", which makes me wonder: why is there such a specific verb in the English language? I have never even thought of "disposing of anything in a lottery")

A "raffle" as distinct from a "lottery" in American English differs in how the prize is decided, and what kinds of things are typically the prize.

Typically a lottery runs in one of two ways: with pre-decided winning tickets, or a number that's drawn after the tickets are distributed to decide which ticket (if any) is the winner. In this way, the odds of winning are mostly independent of the number of tickets sold. The prize is usually money.

A raffle works by selling tickets, and then picking exactly one of those tickets to be the winner, making the odds directly dependent on the number of tickets sold. The prize is usually a physical object, and not money (though there are exceptions, e.g., a 50/50 raffle).

Thanks for the explanation. I'm familiar with the both forms of gambling, but for some reason, I've encountered "lottery" as a term a lot more; "raffle" I hardly knew, until now. Thanks!

Usually raffles in the US are for charity or fundraising purposes. You can't run a lottery usually, as those run against gambling laws. You can run a raffle, where an item worth $X (and usually donated so X=0) will be given away to the owner of a random ticket which costs $Y. The runner of the raffle sells N tickets. Your profit/fundraising is $YN - $X.

Often raffles are sold significantly below expected value. A popular raffle to support a charity is called a 50/50 raffle. This is where the winner of the raffle receives 50% of $YN, and the charity receives the other 50%. Buying a ticket isn't a good financial decision, but it's for a charity, and you can end up winning, so they are popular.

From what I understand, the game of bingo is similar to lottery in the sense that the participants can and do decide the contents of their tickets themselves. Is organizing bingo OK in the US or does it run against the gambling laws?

The event itself is called “a raffle” and the verb comes from that.

The technical difference, vs a lottery, is that a raffle always has exactly one winner, drawn from all of the entries. In most lotteries, it’s possible for no one to win or several people to share the prize.

Raffle also implies that the event is a smaller, one-off event, usually with non-cash prizes and often for charity. A church might have a raffle to raise money for a new roof, using prizes donated by the parishioners. This is in contrast to lotteries, which are usually run by the government, feature cash prizes, and occur on a fixed schedule.

A raffle is a game of chance. You "buy into" the raffle and get a ticket that goes into a hat or bowl. The person doing the raffle chooses a ticket at random and the person that owns that ticket is the winner.

It's not really about "disposing" the donkey it is about giving other people the chance to win the donkey...that is dead

Anyway, to the fellow confused people, here's the simple English version: Kenny made the donkey a prize of a lottery he organized, and didn't tell the participants the donkey was dead.

In response to your question in the edit: it's the word "off" at the end that gives the phrase a nuance that could be interpreted as "disposing of".

English has an unusually large vocabulary, many words with very specific meanings.

I think you forgot the last few lines, where the guy who won ended up telling a friend at the bar how he won the donkey but the donkey was dead all along. And then an irate mob descended upon Kenny's farm, burned down his house, put him against a tree and shot him, and then took his $998.00 and bought rounds for everyone back at the bar.