Unless you live under a rock, you have heard about this thing called "Pokémon Go."

It is a mobile app game derived from the popular series of "Pokémon" video games that have been gracing Nintendo gaming platforms for 20 years. In the "Pokémon" games, you travel a variety of virtual terrains attempting to catch as many Pokémon, fictional creatures you can train, battle with, and trade, as possible. Until now, Pokémon-catching has been confined to the virtual realm, but no longer. In "Pokémon Go," the world around you becomes a place to catch Pokémon. You can walk down a street or in a park, and the app uses your phone's camera to virtually augment your screen to make it appear as if a Pokémon is in front of you. The app has been wildly successful, smashing download records and garnering more active users than Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram. Needless to say, it is a phenomenon.

That is not to say "Pokémon Go" is not without its detractors. There have been numerous accounts of accidents caused by distracted "Pokemon Go"'ers crossing streets, walking off cliffs, and so many players congregating in a specific location that they become a disturbance and annoyance. However, there is a specific kind of response I want to focus on. While there are legitimate safety concerns raised by "Pokémon Go," I have seen several posts circulating the Internet, like this:

*Censored for vulgar language*

Now, I understand and sympathize with the intent behind these posts. After all, "Pokémon Go" is profoundly silly.

You are chasing and catching fake creatures on your cell phone with no clear end goal or purpose. This silliness seems profoundly ignorant or even disrespectful of the real, tangible events that are shattering and reshaping the world around us: be it the shooting of three police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, an attempted military coup in Turkey or any of the countless, senseless, confusing acts of sorrow that perpetually dominate our headlines.

However, I contend that silliness, like "Pokémon Go," is profoundly important because of these events, not in spite of them.

What is on trial here appears to be fiction. Why immerse yourself in a fictional world of Pokémon when the real world is so loudly and forcefully in need of our attention? Sir Christopher Lee, a renowned British actor who plays one of the recurring villains in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, observed that the success of the fictional fantasy genre was due to fact that “we all love to dream. We don’t live in a particularly attractive world. I don’t really remember, except as a small boy, anything but a pretty grim world. I’m old enough to have seen Hitler in the flesh....I’m old enough to remember the Second World War...let us not lose faith, let us be optimistic, let us believe in the good things, but we still have to face the world as it is. When you live in a world like that, what do you want? You want to escape, to get out of this world from time to time, into another world."

Lee is not saying that we should engage in escapism, where we cordon ourselves off from the world and never engage with it. However, he is saying that fiction, like "Pokémon Go," is profoundly important in enabling us to not get bogged down in the horrors of life. Sure, the world is a messy, dirty, evil place sometimes. Fiction has a way of briefly pulling us back from that messiness, and reminding it is worth fighting for, regardless of that fact.

Tom Clancy, the author of the popular Cold War-era Jack Ryan novels was only half-joking when he says, "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense." The world does not make sense a large part of the time. It is unnecessarily cruel, confusing, and crass. Fiction and stories have this way of imposing order, finding patterns and holding tight that life has some kind of meaning.

And, sure, are the "Lord of the Rings" movies and the Jack Ryan novels silly? Of course, they are.

That's the point.

Humans, and Americans in particular take ourselves way too seriously. Let's loosen up a bit! There may be days where the terrorists, cop-killers, and racists seem to be winning, but do not let them steal your joy! Silliness can be the most poignant form of rebellion. Being silly can be a way in which you tell the darkness:

No. I will not buy into your narrative of despair.

Famed Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once remarked, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”� We are too quick to grow up and too slow to want to be young. We think too much and feel too little. We need to get out of ourselves and be reminded of the absurdity of it all.

So! Play "Pokémon Go" in the sweltering summer sun; watch all the Star Wars movies in one sitting with an unreasonably large bowl of popcorn; dress in a kilt and play bagpipes while waltzing down the street; dance like you did when you were young and embarrass your kids. Sing unnecessarily loud to some half-forgotten camp song from your childhood. Dream big; love recklessly; laugh loudly.

Be silly.