Title says it all pretty much. F**k politics, I don't want to deal with them anymore, f**k 'em however is most uncomfortable for them. Lots of eye contact would be my suggestion, and then say "I love you" when they're too far in to stop but not far enough to not be paying attention to what you say. The point is, Pokemon Go is out and it has quickly accomplished many things that American politics has failed to do. Good job Capitalism, I know you don't hear it from young people enough, but sometimes you're just what we need.

For those of you who, somehow, don't know, Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game for your phone that allows you to find and catch Pokemon by walking around outside. Now apart from getting people to go outside, and changing what pops up in my suggested search when I type "P-O" into the URL bar, Pokemon Go has inadvertently created a unique and wonderful social environment. The main hub of activity for Pokemon in my town is a public park near the downtown area. Now usually if me and my friends were going somewhere, we'd pretty much keep to ourselves, as did most other people around. After the release of Pokemon Go, that has changed significantly.

It's pretty easy to spot other players, they're usually holding their phones flat in their hand in front of them, and constantly checking it. Because Poke Trainers can pick one another out so easily, and because the fear of missing out on a cool Pokemon is stronger than any social anxiety, it's common place to start interacting with other players. Sure, there's people you'd expect to be playing, the geeky looking kids with Pokemon hats or comic book characters on their shirts (read: me), but then you walk by the guy shooting baskets that asks you if there's any good Pokemon around, or the shirtless buff dude on the long board stops to help you take a gym and you start to realize a lot more people like this game than you thought. You start to realize all of these people you thought were so different from you are all just as excited about the same virtual creatures as you. It's a great life lesson to learn, that tall or short, fat or skinny, white or... uh, not white? Who can keep track. The point is we all are united in one single community, meaning Pokemon Go.

Now although all players in the game, or "trainers," are friendly, there is a bit of competition within the game. See the game has three teams which players can choose from. A blue team, a red team, and a yellow team. Funny that kind of reminds me of something else. Oh, right. Pokemon Emerald for the Gameboy Advance, but in that game the neutral, or independent, color was green, go figure. Each of the teams has a leader and you pledge your allegiance to one shortly into the game. Some might say you are asked to choose too early, at level five, and would prefer if we could mature a bit until we fully understood the game more to be able to back one of these team leaders, but the developers decided that's how it'd be a long time ago and so we have to keep doing it that way I guess. Anyways, each team has gained it's own reputation online. The two most popular teams are the red and blue teams, teams Valor and Mystic respectively. Team Valor people are see as being, for lack of a better word, giant douches. Illustrated here in this fabulous picture. And this one. Not all Valor players are that bad, but some are giant assholes who scream "Team Valor" after sniping your gym then ride off on their bikes. I watched my friend who is on Team Valor put his Pokemon in a gym that was captured by a young boy just moments before. While the boy was excitedly showing his mom that he captured a gym, my friend threw his highest level Pokemon in there. A Hypno he had nicknamed "Dream Killer." Team Mystic doesn't seem to catch as much flak, mostly likely because they are the most popular team, and they aren't Team Valor. The least popular team is the yellow team, Team Instinct (woo go us). Most people talk about how useless Team Instinct is, due to the fact that less players on the team means we capture less gyms.

So to reiterate there's a red team that a lot of good people are probably a part of but is looked on unfavorably due to some bad apples. There's a blue team that's kinda like eh, whatever at least it's not red team. And a third team with a neutral color that nobody really cares about and few people are a part of and... fuck. Am I talking about politics again? The answer is sort of, but there's a lesson to be learned from this whole thing. The Pokemon Go community might have its differences but at the end of the day we all get along. We may say "boo Valor" or "gross Mystic" or "someone make sure that Instinct kid doesn't wander into traffic" but at the end of the day it's all in good fun. We still help each other out in the game, sharing tips or Pokemon locations. We get along because we know there's a lot of people out there that are thinking "you're 22 years old, stop playing Pokemon."

I think the rest of the U.S. could learn from the Pokemon Go community, because a lot more places in the world don't think too favorably of us, and in a some of countries it's getting worse. So maybe the least we could do is start getting along with each other. Sure we might all be on different teams, but maybe we can start helping each other in the ways that matter. Like finding rare Pokemon or not shooting people because their skin is a different color. You know, common courtesy stuff. Who knows, maybe if the rest of the world starts seeing us all get along and not acting like backwards idiots and the numbers on that table will start going up. If not I'm sure there's Pokemon in Canada I can catch.