Culture

Donald Trump And Hillary Clinton Discovered Pokémon Go And Now It’s Ruined For Everyone

Why do politicians ruin everything?

by Osman Faruqi  15 July 2016

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It was only a matter of time before the wholesome fun that is Pokémon Go was ruined by the very unwholesome, terrible institution of US politics. Just in case you thought the Presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump couldn’t get any worse, they went and discovered Pokémon Go and ruined it forever.

At a campaign event today Clinton made what is perhaps the worst pun of all time when she said “I don’t know who created Pokémon Go, but I’m trying to figure out how we get them to Pokémon… Go to the polls!!” Just awful stuff.

Clinton’s campaign team have been visiting PokéStops and encouraging Pokémon Go players to register to vote, which is actually a pretty damn good way of doing civic engagement.

Unfortunately all the goodwill Clinton got for registering voters disappeared faster than a sinking S.S. Anne when it turned out her campaign team had organised a public rally at a Gym in Ohio and would be dropping lure modules in an attempt to encourage attendance. All I can say is thank god the game was released after our federal election campaign. Could you imagine Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull battling for control of the Parliamentary Gym and dropping lure modules in marginal seats across the country?

Sadly Clinton isn’t the only Presidential candidate to embrace Pokémon Go in an attempt to win votes. Earlier today Donald Trump released a video on his Facebook page called “Crookéd Hillary No”. In the 16 second clip someone, presumably Trump himself, throws a Pokéball at Clinton who is described as a “Often lying to the American people, rigging the system and sharing TOP SECRET emails.” The completely absurd video has been watched more than 5 million times in eight hours.

Unfortunately American voters have another three months of election campaigning to go and it looks like they will be subject to a constant stream of bad memes and lame attempts to attract crowds by dropping lure modules. With any luck Clinton and Trump will both become obsessed with catching Pokémon and give up politics altogether, letting the US get on with business as usual.

Trump’s newfound Pokémon Go obsession shouldn’t really come as a surprise. After all, he would make a pretty good fit for Team Rocket. He likes “protecting the world from devastation”, if you replace world with “US” and protecting with “Build a gigantic wall between between the US and Mexico and get them to pay for it somehow”. He’s also keen to “Unite all peoples within our nation” as long as those peoples aren’t Muslims or hispanics, and he is very good at denouncing things.

Clinton on the other hand is sort of like the Elite Four all rolled into one. She’s powerful, aloof and will crush her opponent (Bernie Sanders) until he comes at her with a Level 80 Charizard. These comparisons may seem silly but they are definitely nowhere as bizarre as the real life use of Pokémon Go by desperate political candidates. If the game isn’t already dead it soon will be because if Donald Trump is now talking about something it definitely, definitely isn’t cool anymore.