Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for enjoying Pokémon

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/07/2016 (3342 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Pokémon Go has officially arrived in Canada, and the app is still dominating the news cycle. Pokémon Go: still A Thing. 

It’s also a divisive thing. Social media is populated by downright heartwarming stories of strangers connecting in real life at Pokéstops, bonding and building community over the game (aw). Much ink has been spilled about how Pokémon Go is helping people re-discover, and fall in love with, their own cities (aw). 

Others, myself included, expressed concern about safety, both digital and physical. Players have been reminded not to drive while catching ’em all and not to trespass on private property in search of Pidgey. (Also, for the sake of decorum, maybe don’t catch Pokémon in a Holocaust museum.)

Then there’s the ‘I Am Above This’ or ‘I Am Too Cool For This’ response. Many people have spent a surprising amount of energy on hating Pokémon Go, some even going as far as typing up letters literally telling kids to get off their lawns. Let me get this straight: Pokémon Go is a “vapid waste of time,” but spending hours on the Internet telling people the things that bring them joy have no value is a totally respectable pastime? Cool.

Many of us derive a lot of identity out of our tastes, so it’s little wonder we get defensive when something we like is derided. It’s personal. We often assert our identities through our preferences: we have favourite colours, favourite bands, favourite books, favourite movies, favourite foods. From that personal taste, a shorthand emerges: this is what I like, this is who I am. That shorthand is how we find like-minded friends, it’s how we find common ground with each other. “Hey, me too!” can be very powerful statement. 

Of course, many people can like the same thing, be it a very catchy pop song, an indulgent treat, a particularly addictive TV show or an augmented-reality game for a smartphone. Those things become popular or, gasp!,mainstream. When that happens, it presents a bit of a dilemma for those who believe their personal tastes make them unique. Those things are no longer special, because those things are no longer theirs.

We make value judgments about people based on taste all the time, even though taste is completely subjective. There is no mutually agreed upon, clearly defined criteria for what makes something good or bad, which is why a single/book/movie/game can be critical hit but a commercial failure, or vice versa. And yet, “mainstream” is generally code for “bad.” When was the last time the word mainstream was used as a compliment?

What does liking pumpkin spice lattes, Beyoncé and Pokémon Go really say about a person, other than they like pumpkin spice lattes, Beyoncé and Pokémon Go? What’s really so wrong about hopping on a bandwagon? Where’s the moral failing in liking something that happens to be popular?

Why do people feel the need to tear down what they don’t understand? Just because you don’t get the appeal doesn’t mean there is no appeal.

I’ve long hated the idea of “guilty pleasures.” You know, those “mainstream” things you pretend you don’t enjoy ostensibly because lots of people enjoy them. As Jennifer Szalai wrote in a New Yorker essay on the subject: “The guilt signals that you’re most comfortable in the élite precincts of high art, but you’re not so much of a snob that you can’t be at one with the people. So you confess your remorse whenever you deign to watch Scandal, implying that the rest of your time is spent reading Proust.” 

For a long time, my “guilty pleasure” was McDonald’s cheeseburgers. They are actually my favourite food, but I relegated them to guilty pleasure because there was something shameful about loving, without irony, a nutritionally questionable food product from a fast-food chain whose golden arches are emblematic of everything wrong with modern society. The guilt only intensified when I briefly dabbled in food writing. That little voice in my head insisted: You are a fraud with an unrefined palate.

Guilt is not a particularly pleasurable feeling and should probably be reserved for things over which one should legitimately feel guilty. So I stopped feeling guilty about liking a type of cheeseburger. And at my wedding shower, my best friend served McDonald’s cheeseburgers along with the other appetizers, accompanied by a delicate placecard that read “Jen’s favourite!” They were a big hit.

If you want to spend your time catching cute monsters on your phone because it brings you a modicum of joy in this stinking trash fire that has been 2016, who is anyone to make you feel guilty about that? Go catch ’em all.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti