Ten years later, ‘Pokémon Go to the polls’ still haunts the internet

本文为原文前 6,000 字符的节选翻译，完整内容请查看原文。

In the lead-up to a presidential election that would irrefutably transform American culture, Hillary Clinton took the stage at a rally in Virginia as she campaigned to become the first female president. “We’re going to have a lot of jobs — jobs from building infrastructure to coding. Creating new apps,” she said. “I don’t know who created Pokémon GO, but I’m trying to figure out how we get them to have Pokémon Go to the polls.”

在即将迎来一场不可逆转地改变美国文化的总统大选前夕，希拉里·克林顿在弗吉尼亚州的一次集会上登台，为成为美国首位女总统进行竞选。“我们将会有很多工作——从基础设施建设到编程，再到开发新应用，”她说，“我不知道是谁创造了《Pokémon GO》，但我正在想办法让他们搞一个‘Pokémon Go to the polls’（去投票站抓宝可梦）。”

Ten years later, it is once again Election Day in the United States. Now, most app developers aren’t even writing their own code anymore, thanks to AI, and Pokémon GO has been sold to a company wholly owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The only thing about that political moment that hasn’t changed is that “Pokémon Go to the polls” memes still crop up on every Election Day.

十年后的今天，美国再次迎来了选举日。如今，得益于人工智能的发展，大多数应用开发者甚至不再亲自编写代码，而《Pokémon GO》也已被出售给一家由沙特阿拉伯主权财富基金全资拥有的公司。那个政治时刻唯一没有改变的，就是“Pokémon Go to the polls”的梗在每个选举日依然会反复出现。

“It was very bold and confident, and also just sounded so terribly out of touch and corny,” Cesar Ruiz de Castilla, an elected ward committee member in Philadelphia, told TechCrunch. “I don’t know if the mainstream media cared that much about it, but everyone was making a meme about it and talking about it online.”

“这表现得非常大胆和自信，但也听起来极其脱离现实且老套，”费城的一名民选选区委员会成员塞萨尔·鲁伊斯·德·卡斯蒂利亚（Cesar Ruiz de Castilla）告诉TechCrunch。“我不知道主流媒体是否真的那么在意，但每个人都在网上制作关于它的梗并讨论它。”

Since then, digital culture has become increasingly inextricable from the fate of American politics. Donald Trump tweeted his way through his first term, then later started his own social media platform; presidential campaigns hire meme managers; the White House invites podcasters and content creators to press briefings; Elon Musk even spun up his own advisory group under Trump that named itself after the cutesy doge meme and then slashed international aid programs.

从那时起，数字文化与美国政治的命运变得愈发密不可分。唐纳德·特朗普在第一个任期内通过推特治国，后来又创办了自己的社交媒体平台；总统竞选团队聘请了“梗管理专员”；白宫邀请播客主和内容创作者参加新闻发布会；埃隆·马斯克甚至在特朗普麾下成立了自己的咨询小组，以可爱的“Doge”表情包命名，随后削减了国际援助项目。

“The 2016 election was such a monumental moment in internet history, and we were all there for it — our politics have become more, not just divided, but segmented online,” Organizer Memes, a political influencer who teaches Gen Z activists how to reach their peers online via memes, told TechCrunch. “It’s a relic of an optimistic, bygone political era.”

“2016年大选是互联网历史上一个里程碑式的时刻，我们都亲历其中——我们的政治在网上变得不仅是分裂，更是碎片化了，”一位教导Z世代活动家如何通过梗在网上触达同龄人的政治网红“Organizer Memes”告诉TechCrunch。“这是乐观的、逝去的政治时代的一件遗物。”

Now, people who weren’t even old enough to vote in 2016 reflect on the year as a cultural turning point, even calling it “the last good year.” It’s a sentiment that isn’t so much political as it is rooted in nostalgia for an era of internet culture before AI slop, when we used social media to connect with friends, rather than doomscrolling through an algorithmic feed of people we don’t even follow.

如今，那些在2016年还没到投票年龄的人将那一年视为文化转折点，甚至称其为“最后的美好一年”。这种情绪与其说是政治性的，不如说是源于对人工智能垃圾内容出现前互联网文化时代的怀念——那时我们使用社交媒体是为了与朋友联系，而不是在算法推送的陌生人信息流中进行“末日刷屏”。

At the start of the new year, this yearning for the old internet became a viral sentiment as millions of people shared throwback photos from 2016 on Instagram. Spotify reported that user-generated playlists featuring 2016 in their titles spiked 790% in the first three weeks of the year, and the company changed its Instagram bio at the time to say it’s “romanticizing 2016 again.”

新年伊始，这种对旧互联网的渴望成为了一种病毒式的情绪，数百万人开始在Instagram上分享2016年的怀旧照片。Spotify报告称，标题中带有“2016”的用户自建播放列表在年初的前三周激增了790%，该公司当时还将Instagram简介改为“再次浪漫化2016”。

Never mind that, at the time, the internet perceived 2016 as a cursed year, even before the election — months earlier, one Slate columnist wondered how 2016 compared to 1348, the year the Black Death took hold in Europe. “[Pokémon Go to the polls] is in that era of the singular internet, when Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr were all kind of bouncing content back-and-forth and not just this complete anarchic mess of 25 platforms that we now have and don’t use,” Organizer Memes said.

别忘了，当时互联网在选举前就将2016年视为“被诅咒的一年”——几个月前，一位《Slate》专栏作家甚至在思考2016年与1348年（黑死病席卷欧洲的那一年）相比如何。“[Pokémon Go to the polls]属于那个单一互联网的时代，那时Facebook、Twitter和Tumblr都在互相转发内容，而不是像现在这样，我们拥有25个完全混乱且根本不用的平台，”Organizer Memes说道。

Organizer Memes also notes that some cultural touchstones that felt more significant then — like the obsession with Harambe the gorilla — haven’t had as much staying power as “Pokémon Go to the polls.” Perhaps this is because we’re bound to remember “Pokémon Go to the polls” every few years on Election Day, and because it appeals to both sides of the aisle. On the right, it’s a way to make fun of Democrats, and on the left, it’s a shared groan of embarrassment.

Organizer Memes还指出，一些当时感觉更重要的文化标志——比如对大猩猩哈兰贝（Harambe）的痴迷——并没有像“Pokémon Go to the polls”那样具有持久的影响力。这或许是因为我们注定每隔几年就会在选举日想起这个梗，而且它对两党阵营都有吸引力。在右翼看来，这是嘲笑民主党的一种方式；而在左翼看来，这是一种共同的尴尬叹息。

“It’s like if all the kids in a class are making a joke, and then the teacher gets in on the joke, and it stops being funny,” Mack Finkel, who canvassed at the polls on Tuesday on behalf of a healthcare workers’ union, told TechCrunch. “I think there’s a key essence of millennial cringe happening here, and it’s the same reason that all my friends are rewatching [HBO’s] ‘Girls.’”

“这就像班里所有的孩子都在开玩笑，然后老师也加入进来，这个笑话就不再好笑了，”周二代表医疗工会在投票站进行拉票的麦克·芬克尔（Mack Finkel）告诉TechCrunch。“我认为这里有一种千禧一代尴尬的核心本质，这和我所有的朋友都在重温HBO剧集《都市女孩》（Girls）的原因是一样的。”

Clinton’s decade-old, corny comment can be seen as a precursor to the “Kamala is brat” meme. While the former vice president’s record as a prosecutor initially made her unpopular among some left-leaning young voters, they rallied around her once she became the only alternative to Trump. Gen Z rallied around Harris by creating flashy, absurdist “fan cam”-style edits of the candidate’s best quips in the aesthetic of Charli XCX’s album “Brat,” which soundtracked the summer of 2024.

克林顿十年前那句老套的评论，可以被视为“Kamala is brat”（卡玛拉是小顽童）这一梗的前身。尽管这位前副总统作为检察官的记录最初让她在一些左倾年轻选民中不受欢迎，但当她成为特朗普唯一的替代人选时，他们还是团结在了她周围。Z世代通过制作华丽、荒诞的“饭拍”风格剪辑来支持哈里斯，这些剪辑采用了Charli XCX专辑《Brat》的美学风格，该专辑成为了2024年夏天的背景音乐。

“Previously the views I saw about Harris were making fun of her being a cop, like her history as attorney general in California with truancy laws,” Jess Rauchberg, an assistant professor of communications at the University of Leeds, told TechCrunch at the time. “Now we see that same style of memeification, but it’s an endorsement.”

“之前我看到的关于哈里斯的观点都是在嘲笑她当过警察，比如她担任加州总检察长时在逃学法上的记录，”利兹大学传播学助理教授杰斯·劳赫伯格（Jess Rauchberg）当时告诉TechCrunch。“现在我们看到了同样风格的梗化，但它变成了一种背书。”

It’s hard to say why “Pokémon Go to the polls” jokes still make us laugh — whether we’re mocking Clinton or expressing solidarity with others who keep showing up to vote, even as each passing year leaves us feeling more cynical. “Pokémon Go to the polls” is a way of urging others to make the time to vote and take Election Day seriously, while still acknowledging disappointment with aging lawmakers who don’t know what it’s like to come of age in the social media era.

很难说为什么“Pokémon Go to the polls”的笑话依然能让我们发笑——无论我们是在嘲笑克林顿，还是在表达与那些坚持投票的人的团结，尽管每过一年我们都感到更加愤世嫉俗。“Pokémon Go to the polls”是一种敦促他人抽出时间投票并认真对待选举日的方式，同时也承认了对那些不了解社交媒体时代成长经历的老年立法者的失望。

It’s shrouded in enough irony to project a sense of jaded detachment, yet remains a desperate, earnest plea to our friends: Please, just go vote.

它被足够的讽刺所笼罩，投射出一种厌倦的超脱感，但它依然是对我们朋友的一种绝望而真诚的恳求：拜托，去投票吧。