Pokémon Go and Social Justice Games: Online Hate Groups and Offline Violence
The augmented reality of woke group chats hunting down victims.
Do you remember the Pokémon Go craze of 2016? I am not gamer, but I watched on engrossed, wondering if I was the only one to see a precursor to something sinister. This was a threshold moment, when the surreal and virtual exploded into the actual and possible. Back then, this thought set me at some distance to the gamers and the disdainers alike. News reports and newspapers discussed the immediate dangers. Most worry was caused by screen shot kids stumbling across busy roads. Some hailed the health benefits of moving reclusive gamers into competitive exercise outdoors. Others viewed Pokémon Go suspiciously, seeing it as the first puppeteer of the zombies we might all become. There was a lot of talk of zombies. Stoking a fear that ‘the technology’ harbours some sort of death. Even among this hype and hysteria I was too embarrassed to share my concerns. I thought that too many years studying the philosophers of suspicion had given my mind a comically cynical bent. Little did I know that the phenomenon I feared had already begun, just not by the nefarious forces I had feared.
My suspicion was simple, ‘what if the crowds were not hunting down Pokémon, but people?’ What if racists were to hunt down alleged criminals, looters or terrorists? From 2013 there was civil unrest, protests and uprisings after the killing of black Americans by Police officers. Detractors of the BlackLivesMatter movement declared looters would be punished and people were shot dead on the street, and in 2016 Donald Trump became the Republican candidate to take over the presidency from Barack Obama. It really felt like a backlash was coming.
Meanwhile, thousands of people were being mobilized to capture imaginary creatures across vast cities. When it launched on the 6th of July in America and Australia servers crashed because of the 20 million trying to play the game[1]. No sooner than it had caught the public attention in 2016, Pokémon Go had already millions of gamers in the US. Some were spotted wandering through the set of a TV weather report, others abandoned their cars in the middle of busy streets in New York City to catch a Pokémon in Central Park. Some even tragically walked off cliffs while playing. How could the normative goals of competitive gaming generate that level of enthusiasm?
This question quickly led me to another, Which forces would harness such enthusiasm? I drew analogies with the enthusiasm generated by political ideologies. Both compel people to act as if their political or moral end justifies any means. People put themselves willingly in danger for the cause and are willing to unite with strangers to achieve their goal. Fascist ideologies, racist and sexist ideologies, could harness similar platforms online to spontaneously organise themselves across a city. I thought of mobbing, witch hunts and lynch mobs. It was a typical presumption of a young lefty that the forces of evil to harness this technology would come from the far right.
I was working in a local bar in Berlin when I discovered that the left had taken up violent means to their ends, and that ‘radical’ feminists were doing the same thing. They had drawn lessons from their horrible experiences at the worst of men and were directing a repertoire of abuses at vulnerable foreigners. I first heard of this from a colleague who liked me and courted me. However, this would end up with threats, with sad passions and pettiness, when I repeatedly rejected her advances. The victim is tracked across the city as members post his whereabouts on the group chat. Barmen and baristas are content to spoil his beverage or spike his pint. This is the same group chat where the smear campaign is conducted, and the footage or photo’s of him being humiliated are posted. This is done to such great effect that everyone has cause to participate in the hunt of the horrible imaginary creature. Imaginary because I am not a sexist, racist, right-wing, cheating cad with a wandering hand. How are we to understand this level of widespread hatred for a stranger and such enthusiasm for violent abuse. Surprising as it might be, I suggest we take Pokémon Go as a precursor.
Pokémon Go and totemic religion
The Pokémon Go craze was for finding and collecting imaginary creatures. Some patronising comparisons with religion were made at the time. In fact, Pokémon are inspired by the mythologies of Japan’s oldest religion. Shintoism teaches that the world is inhabited by Kami, Gods, that bestow luck when respected, and turn vindictive when disrespected. I could not help but compare the women trying to entrap me at the bar and win my confidences and offer me the secrets of their clan- if only I would spike men for them. Alternatively they would employ their repertoire of psych-ops to wear me down and make threats about what can happen to British men in Berlin. I would respect their powers or I would be face their wrath.
This was ‘religious’ in a broader sense of the term, not in the sense of a strong, ‘devoutly,’ held belief. I am talking exclusively of the enthusiasm for a moral idea or vision of the world, one that imbibes the world with meaning and a sense of right and wrong. Sociologists have come to characterize the cultural phenomenon of Pokémon Go in similar terms. They claimed that players were ‘invited to grow obsessive’, not just by the normative goals of competition, but by “inhabiting the moral goal of “loving” and “respecting” the Pokémon (Pokémon, p43 -44).
Durkheim argued that beliefs about what is sacred or profane, or good and evil, in a totemic religious revolves around the totems. However, sanctity does not arise directly from the totems themselves. Similarly, the enthusiasm for Pokémon Go does not come directly from the sensations aroused by the Pokémon on screen. While Pokémon are designed to be cute to invite an obsessive care for them, the attempts to soften the Japanese notion of cuteness for the western consumer failed. Pokémon are anything but cute, and even though the invitation to ‘inhabit’ a moral goal might still be conveyed by the Pokémon, the source of enthusiasm obviously lies elsewhere.
The totems gain their force from the clan, and the Pokémon have the power to arouse religious enthusiasm only in relation to the clan. The Pokémon should be seen as a symbol of the clan and the principle that governs their gaming and belief. “The God of the clan, the totemic principle,” Durkheim explains, “can therefore be nothing else than the clan itself, personified and represented to the imagination under the visible form of the animal or vegetable which serves as totem.” (1912:236). In other words, the Pokémon Gods are an apotheosis of the tribe of gamers which see themselves as cute, vulnerable, lovable and worthy of respect. This is in keeping with the Japanese ‘culture of cuteness’, kawaii, which the gamers of Pokémon Go participate in. The term kawaii can refer to items, humans, and non-humans that are charming, vulnerable, shy, and childlike.[2]
In its original sense ‘kawaii’ referred to the docile nature of women that arouses pathos. It is thus an unlikely influence on a radical leftist and feminist movement, but the parallels to what is pejoratively called ‘woke’ in the west are clear. In one of two ways kawaii is written, the main character’ literally translates to "able to love/ be loved, can/ may love, lovable." In their collective endeavours, the gamers show themselves to be especially vulnerable, loving and respectful to their friends, relatives and gamers, who are also vulnerable and worthy of love, respect and protection. Furthermore, in the collective performance of the Pokémon hunt, the gamers inspire a sense of confidence and well-being in each other. This all sounds utopic. I mean, who would not want to share the means to spontaneous communal expressions of love and respect. This is the positive function of the totem. There is however, Durkheim insists, a negative function of the totem, which is worlds apart from the image of lovable millennials on their mobiles. This brings us to Gen Z.
Social justice tribalism
The collective religious enthusiasm of Pokémon Go is in stark contrast to the atomistic life in large cities in the age of capitalism. This is however an iteration of an ancient distinction, namely, that between the intense periods of collective enthusiasm and the prolonged periods of drudgery as an individual. You might compare your Sunday service and family lunch that consoles you on your overcrowded Monday morning commute; or contrast the collective effervescence of a party, and its spirits, which haunts your weeks work in the café. This distinction, Durkheim argues, led primitive people to think that there are two worlds- the profane and the sacred. The sanctity of those intense moments of ‘collective effervescence,’ as Durkheim termed them, had to be kept within bounds to maintain the intensity of the collective performance. For the sanctified to maintain itself it must perform negative cults and functions to separate it from the profane. Of course, the totems at the centre of this negative cult are a special case. Not all the people we love, and respect need to become objects of religious interdiction. This is something peculiar to religious enthusiasm, or what Durkheim called, “the contagiousness of the sacred.”
The contagiousness of the sacred demands protection because objects can lose their sanctity by the same means it was gained, and the profane can become sacred just the same. This protection comes in the form of interdictions against ‘the profane’ that are performed as part of the negative cult. These performances of the cult keep the sacred and the profane worlds apart. If profane objects, words, and people did not exist, the self-sanctified tribe would need to create them. It is easy to see how the ‘cancel culture’ and the ‘call out culture’ of Gen Z provide for such a negative function. Those cancelled are invariably subjected to online abuse and a smear campaign deriding them as hateful fascists or Nazis. They are a profanity because they are hateful, and it is because they are chastised as hateful, that the woke hatred for them is sanctified. The ‘call-out culture’ can be viewed similarly. It does not pick out unsound arguments or a false premise, but charged words that are not to be spoken because they are considered violent. Students demand “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” on campus, sacred spaces for their tribe, to insulated them from profanity. By 2015, I was already being told that I should be referring to myself as a cis-man. When I first heard this in Berlin, the city of the Donner Kebab, it made me uncomfortable to hear that I would henceforth be called after large, skewered meat. Two feminist pals in the bar shared this joke with a peculiar enthusiasm.
Durkheim compares the collective efference with electricity and argues that religion creates something like an electric field. The totem operates like the charged object that creates the polarity and all charged objects in the field, whether or positive or negative, are effected. Amid a religious social phenomenon, as Durkheim describes them, there are very few neutrals. Potentially any object could become charged by social movements and performances of the tribe. We might today say, that when something becomes sanctified or profane, it goes viral, and everyone gains a positive or negative charge in relation to it. As the contagion spreads it becomes harder for anyone to claim, with any plausibility, that they are not aware of the significance of that charged object or word, or that you are neutral ‘towards’ it.
There is a positive function here, namely, the increased awareness of prejudice that can be ascribed to the woke movement. It makes it harder for racist people to hide behind the excuse of ignorance and reduces circumstances in which minorities suffer from genuine ‘unguilty’ ignorance. However, there is the negative function as well, and it is betrayed in the popular opinion that the harm or offense caused by someone’s fau pax is equal to the guilt and punishment that the offending person should suffer. The danger is that in expressing our own purity of the profane in this way, by pointing out hurtful speech and hurtful acts everywhere, and expressing our disgust at them, we anxiously project our own fears and dissatisfaction with ourselves onto others. The sharp end of the problem is that the projection of collective disgust on an individual is dehumanizing. The victim becomes an objectified symbol which carries all the characteristics or traits which society must compulsively repel, expel or expunge. Which is to say, the victim becomes a totem for the negative cult. The projection of disgust tends to promote violence among the cult towards the victim.
Social Media and the augmented reality of man hunts
I am not the disgusting racist, sexist, right-wing, cheating cad that the group uses to galvanise the hate against me. However, the negative cults of smear campaigns and posting recordings of abuses, or reactions to abuse, creates an augmented reality. The victims appear as evil dangerous creatures which are surreptitiously mixing in with vulnerable, lovable, respectful people. This calls members to the hunt, to drug and otherwise harass the creature and chase it out of public spaces. Trophy photos are posted on the Telegram group chat to demonstrate one’s moral status in the group. With so many members distributed across the city, the group chat lays claim to the whole city as their gaming landscape. Bartenders post something when the toxic totemic creature appears in the bar, perhaps a photo to demonstrate the group’s power of surveillance and the expanse of their open world game. A photo also serves as a provocation to the most pious of the group. The latter are the most likely to inhabit the moral goal of loving and respecting their tribe vociferously but take particular enjoyment in the negative cults.
Perhaps the most sinister aspect of this group chat is the way the image of the toxic totem is likely to provoke the memory of the horrible and perhaps traumatic experiences at the hands of the men symbolised by the totem. All sorts of wrongs and grievances are projected onto this figure that exists in the augmented reality shared in the collective effervescence of the hunt. While some might relive a traumatic event in the game which allows them to control the encounter with the totemic creature, others are likely to just be narcissistic abusers.
In case the moral goal of the group is not compelling for people, the bar offers free drinks. Nearby members casually collect spontaneously at bars to start their night in the name of feminism and anti-racism. Of course, some barely feign interest in the game beyond the hospitality of the event, seemingly the majority of these members are young men. Even if the bar or coffeeshop found the game ethically questionable, its popularity means that entertaining the totemic toxic man would put the reputation of their establishment and staff at risk. If the victim has already gone viral, no one can be neutral to the gravitational pull of the movement. The power of this group, and social media generally, must be reckoned with by all.
Studies have shown that social media operates like Durckheim’s polarizing electric field. Social media charges the field with enthusiasm for the hunt, harassment, and abuse of others. When interdicted speech and actions go viral online, the collective effervescence in punishment ensues in the form of ‘likes’, ‘retweets’ of the abuses documented. The main concerns about social media have always been focused on online virtual abuse, which is all too real in its effects. Now the abuses are spilling offline into the material abuse of bodies. If you do not participate or enthusiastically chastise the profane, you may lose your tribe and your status. Faced with this tribal enthusiasm, being an individual can become the most frightening experience and something to be avoided at all costs.
The social progressive movement and barbarism
Socially progressive movements express moral emotions such as sympathy for the plight of people who have been marginalised, and a sense of indignation at the wrongs done to others, including those done in the past, and the desire to seek some sort of correction to such wrongs. The problem is that many such movements undermine those emotions with reactionary principles. The most obvious being the idea that our tribal identities are the most significant we have. Of all our tribal identities that can be traced in the network of intersectional forces that define us, modern movements reduces them down to just gender and race, and then draw a horizon around their clan. In this, their moral emotions coalesce with right wing nationalists who reject ethical responsibility to the Other on the bases of their own tribal identity. Nationalists such Modi’s Hindus, Orbán’s Hungarians, Netanyahu’s Israelis and Putin’s Russians, are happy to sing from the same hymn book as the social justice campaigners, when they claim that their tribal identity is what matters. In so doing they can employ the same tropes to reject the call for human rights, namely, by reminding the West what they have done in the name of human rights. In this way, the moral world order that the social justice warriors enthusiastically express is undermined by the negative function of their interdictions and human rights abuses. The online hate groups that view themselves as social justice campaigners are carrying out human rights abuses on people who express the same moral emotions as them, only differently.
Accusations of being a cheat and having a wander hand are made against me behind a secure group chat. My real transgressions are rejecting the feminist in the bar, rejecting their politics and refusing to drug men for them in the bar. I have been punished for a decade based on false accusations and my human right to a fair trial has been denied. The hacking of my mobile, the theft of external hard drives, and the unlawful entry into my flat have infringed my human right to respect for private property and family life. Their surveillance of me in public places and the intimidation of people who begin to associate with me in public places, infringes my human right to freedom of assembly and association. The punishment I suffer, above all the persistent drugging, infringes my human right not to suffer torture, and the right to liberty and security. Human rights abuses have become frivolous fun with the anonymity of unaccountable administrators offering new victims and new abuses to their followers. People are inhabiting the moral goal of protecting the vulnerable and lovable Gen Z social gamers by committing violent abuses on total strangers. It is not the banality of evil that is unique to our barbarism, it is the frivolity of dehumanization.
In future posts I will explain what Gone Girl Feminism is and how it became possible, and I will warn you how to avoid being drugged. Please have the courage of your convictions and make a comment, and of course, please let me know if you have been harassed, drugged, or abused yourself. I will not judge you for whatever you may have done or whatever you have been accused of.
[1] Welcome to the Pokéconomy: how businesses are riding the Pokémon craze | Pokémon Go | The Guardian