FUSE TV - On 'Pokémon GO,' and Shared Healing

To say that summer 2016 has been anything less than shit would be a callous understatement. 

Our days in the sun this year have been punctuated by the murders of Christina Grimmie, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile; the massacre at Pulse in Orlando; the Istanbul airport attack; hundreds dead in Baghdad; and Brexit, all while two of the most polarizing candidates in the history of our country attempt to shout over the din of it all in their respective quests for the presidency. I’ve woken up too many mornings these past few months, only to check my phone and feel a wave of nausea wash over me as I scan my timelines. Another attack. Another murder. Another senseless tragedy.

To be connected to the world around you in 2016 is to be in pain. To have any sense of interest in or empathy for others lives, especially those unlike yours, means taking on a tremendous amount of suffering and sorrow at the way things currently operate in this world. Maybe things have always been this way? Maybe we’re only experiencing the sharp sting of realizing that everything always has, and probably always will be, kind of shitty everywhere?

But then a curious distraction—more than a distraction—bubbled up through the cultural zeitgeist, and rather quickly at that: Pokémon GO.

Full disclosure: I’ve been a die-hard Pokémon fan ever since I first picked up a copy of Red for my original Gameboy and leveled up my Dragonite, Starmie, Clefable, and Mewtwo each to level 100 (sans Rare Candies), logging in several hundred hours of gameplay in the process. Pokémon is hard-wired into my sense of nostalgia in a way that only Harry Potter and Britney Spears could ever dare compete with.