How to be a Pokemon Go accelerationist

in #writing8 years ago (edited)

You tire of the Pokemon Go craze already. You feel, in the wisdom of your bones, that crazes are the symptom of a febrile society, one that lurches for aught that will quell the restless fever: the dervish replaced for a time with the calm cycle of the 2048 mantra; the fire cooled with the splash from a Flappy Bird falling into water; one's inner demons drowned out by the wails of Pokemon caught in the lepidopterist's net.

Aught! Aught! Aught!

And yet you - you, who have seen crazes come and go, and the dictators nourished by febrile atmospheres - you know that these are but sticking plasters. This craze, like others, must burn itself out. And the quicker the better, that the real illness might be treated.

What, then, should you do?

This.


Download the game, as the first order of business. Develop an addiction, as the second.

This addiction should be a consuming one. You should capture Pokemon at your place of business, as you go about your daily business and as you do your sinful business in the outhouse. All your thoughts and feelings on this process should be recorded and shared with your closest circle of friends and family, and with the spiritual leaders who give you succour in your time of need. When the addiction spirals, when you are at your lowest, when society is lost and on its knees, it is these men and women, great and small, that you will turn to. They will need to know just how far, and in what direction, you have spun out of control.

The addiction that you cultivate should not be normal. As an accelerationist, rock-bottom is your Himalayan peak, the mists into which you gaze with longing as you toss powdered snow onto the morning campfire. Thus, your keyboard at work should become nothing more than a surface upon which Pokemon may appear. You should sit, still and trembling, waiting for this to be so, until you are fired.

You should wander the streets, ragged of trouser, unkempt of appearance, unwary of the traffic, except as a stream amongst which the Pokemon may dwell and dart. The blaring of horns means nothing. The cars may swerve and screech, but you should crawl on your hands and knees to stalk the flighty creatures. Beneath the moon, you should train your charges, taking food only when fate, or the four winds, brings you sustenance.

Short of money, yet living in a society where to be short of money is to be less than human - to be less worthy even than the Pokemon that you chase, capture and serve - you should turn to crime. Your life and world is now solely the game, so your victims can only be your fellow players. You have much work left to do, so your crimes must be heinous enough to provide you a living, yet not so heinous that the dogs and helicopters are unleashed. You should find an isolated Pokestop, dig and cover a hole and offer to take a photo of any Pokemaster who comes by. Make fast your escape with an agreeable Pokemaster's phone, as they surrender first to gravity and then to the maw of the pit.

Your's is the life of a vagabond now. You cannot stay in one location forever: steal a phone, sell it and move on. This is the path that the accelerationist must tread, rough-hewn as it may be. But you are doing the work of the universe - think on that, as you shiver in a hedge training your beasts.

The craze is a form of bundled chaos, your crimes add to its entropy, the instability of its bounded form. The craze struggles against its internal contradictions. While the world imagines that they will catch Pokemon until the end of time, you - the accelerationist - know that you must only push the craze over the edge, that you move ever closer to ending time itself.

Petty crimes are no longer enough. You must create a loathing of Pokemon Go, a disgust at the depravity that mania induces in its victims. You must shock the world into brief moments of lucidness.

Since you are still at the centre of this great work, you cannot be sole author of this depravity - but you must help its birth, and suffer its consequences. In dangerous places, and at dangerous times, you should seek Pokemon. When the locals counsel caution, you should be reckless. When a gnarled hand grips your sleeve with sudden strength, and a hoarse but fierce voice tells you, "Not inside that house, I beg you", you should reply, "There is a Blastoise inside, put the cross down and let me go, old man".

When, finally, you succeed in being abducted, the world will know that your recklessness in pursuit of Pokemon has cost you your freedom. When you escape, you should do so slowly, stopping to catch Pokemon in an unfamiliar neighbourhood until, inevitably, you are bundled into a van by your enraged kidnapper. The media that reports on your feckless break for freedom will also begin to look askance at Pokemon Go. You are the trickster accelerationist. Your bruises, your ragged clothes, your maxed out Pokemon - chaos pours from them all and the craze burns ever brighter, a supernova unconscious of its fate.

When you are rescued it will be with some reluctance. The detectives will speak anonymously about your insistence on giving a witness statement at a nearby Pokegym. You should ensure that the trial collapses because you have gone hunting for Pokemon in the hills during a blizzard. When mountain rescue arrives in a helicopter, you should demand to be flown to a more remote location where your friend waits lost and alone, malnourished and on the brink of death. When the helicopter lands, you should jump out, capture a Pokemon and then explain that you have made a mistake, that your friend was here last week. It will be better if one or more of the mountain rescue team is lost in the mission, but you are an accelerationist dealing in the unknown. Do not be too hard on yourself if everyone returns unharmed but angry - these are elemental forces, and not every event can be controlled. Your job is simply to direct the entropic flow at the craze, always at the craze.

People will be angry now. At you, but also with the game. Parents will tell their children: "one hour, and no more!" The playing will become furtive for some, a counter-cultural opiate for others. But you must make it wholly toxic, a thing of repulsion that no one in their right mind would ever play.

You must venture into the deepest pit of despair and loneliness in your search for rock bottom. That place, we must assume, will be called /r/PokemonGo. As the months pass by, we can only imagine the depths that will be plumbed in the construction of that virtual community. You must find the darkest, loneliest corner of that dark and lonely place. It will be too much for one person alone, but together you must find the one Pokemon that spawns in territory so taboo that none dare speak its true name.

When you arrive at the airport, state your business truthfully. You go to hunt Pokemon in the territory of Daesh. Security will remind you that humour at airports is not appreciated and you should tell them that you are quite serious. Under interrogation, you will not crack, nor bend, but, lacking the evidence that you are anything other than an eccentric, they will let you through. There will be a record of your flight. The remainder of your journey will be a mystery.

On foot, you should make your way to the Syrian border. You should see, coming in the opposite direction, a slow trickle of refugees. Their purpose is not your's, but you are kindred in spirit. At last, you will come to a porous space, a place that you know to be both invisible frontier of the lands controlled by ISIS and the feeding grounds of the one Pokemon you have yet to catch.

And now you, accelerationist, must step across that last frontier, catch that last Pokemon - and with one last conflagration, the craze will burn out, and we will see, for a moment at least, our childish things for what they are.