Pokemon GO is kind of freaking me out

It's quite astonishing that Nintendo has taken so long to steal their concept back from the short-lived AR fad "Invizimals." Well, it should be astonishing. It's not, because Nintendo, but there you go. This is happening. 

Now, Pokemon has always been a blood sport. You can't argue with that. Well, you could, but the game is about enslaving wild animals and having them fight each other in an arena. You'd be factually wrong.

So far we've managed to turn a blind eye to the fact that we give this to our children as entertainment, because context is important. Star Wars is a film about a young man from the desert whose family gets killed by an imperialistic superpower, leading to his recruitment into a religion that he barely understands which leads him to fly an aircraft into a government building. See? EVERYTHING sounds bad robbed of the proper context.

Pokemon survives because it's set in a cutesy world in which everyone loves each other cartoonishly. We don't see it as a blood sport, because of that kid-friendly filter through which we viewed it. What happens when Pokemon gets stripped of that filter? Well, we get something like this.

I should be pumped right now. I should be super, super, SUPER stoked about the prospect of co-operative community events. The thing is, I just watched what appeared to be a thousands-strong Poke-lynch mob lining the streets of Times Square, baying for Mewtwo's blood. That's not a good optic.

Maybe I'm just in an emotionally vulnerable space right now. The Nuzlocke Challenge was not good for my psychological equilibrium, but voluntarily stripping away a level of detachment between myself and my Pokemon was at least something I could, you know, stop doing. Now Nintendo is doing it too, and I don't know where I have left to hide.

This is PRECISELY the reason I used to own a Team Rocket uniform.

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