Ten years later, it is once again Election Day in the United States. Now, most app developers aren\u2019t even writing<\/a> their own code anymore, thanks to AI, and Pok\u00e9mon GO has been sold<\/a> to a company wholly owned by Saudi Arabia\u2019s sovereign wealth fund. The only thing about that political moment that hasn\u2019t changed is that \u201cPok\u00e9mon Go to the polls\u201d memes<\/a> still crop up on every Election Day.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very bold and confident, and also just sounded so terribly out of touch and corny,\u201d Cesar Ruiz de Castilla, an elected ward committee member in Philadelphia, told TechCrunch. \u201cI don\u2019t know if the mainstream media cared that much about it, but everyone was making a meme about it and talking about it online.\u201d<\/p>\n 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<\/a>; presidential campaigns hire meme managers<\/a>; the White House invites<\/a> 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<\/a> and then slashed international aid programs.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 2016 election was such a monumental moment in internet history, and we were all there for it \u2014 our politics have become more, not just divided, but segmented online,\u201d Organizer Memes<\/a>, a political influencer who teaches Gen Z activists<\/a> how to reach their peers online via memes, told TechCrunch. \u201cIt\u2019s a relic of an optimistic, bygone political era.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, people who weren\u2019t even old enough to vote in 2016 reflect on the year as a cultural turning point, even calling it \u201cthe last good year<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s a sentiment that isn\u2019t 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<\/a> of people we don\u2019t even follow.<\/p>\n At the start of the new year, this yearning for the old internet became a viral sentiment<\/a> as millions of people shared throwback photos from 2016 on Instagram. <\/p>\n 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\u2019s \u201cromanticizing 2016 again.\u201d <\/p>\n Never mind that, at the time, the internet perceived 2016 as a cursed year, even before the election \u2014 months earlier, one Slate columnist wondered<\/a> how 2016 compared to 1348, the year the Black Death took hold in Europe.<\/p>\n \u201c[Pok\u00e9mon 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\u2019t use,\u201d Organizer Memes said. <\/p>\n Organizer Memes also notes that some cultural touchstones that felt more significant then \u2014 like the obsession with Harambe<\/a> the gorilla \u2014 haven\u2019t had as much staying power as \u201cPok\u00e9mon Go to the polls.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps this is because we\u2019re bound to remember \u201cPok\u00e9mon Go to the polls\u201d every few years on Election Day, and because it appeals to both sides of the aisle. On the right, it\u2019s a way to make fun of Democrats, and on the left, it\u2019s a shared groan of embarrassment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s 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,\u201d Mack Finkel, who canvassed at the polls on Tuesday on behalf of a healthcare workers\u2019 union, told TechCrunch. \u201cI think there\u2019s a key essence of millennial cringe happening here, and it\u2019s the same reason that all my friends are rewatching [HBO\u2019s] \u2018Girls.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Clinton\u2019s decade-old, corny comment can be seen as a precursor to the \u201cKamala is brat<\/a>\u201d meme. While the former vice president\u2019s record as a prosecutor<\/a> 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 \u201cfan cam\u201d-style edits<\/a> of the candidate\u2019s best quips in the aesthetic of Charli XCX\u2019s album \u201cBrat,\u201d which soundtracked the summer of 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cPreviously 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<\/a>,\u201d Jess Rauchberg, an assistant professor of communications at the University of Leeds, told TechCrunch at the time<\/a>. \u201cNow we see that same style of memeification, but it\u2019s an endorsement.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to say why \u201cPok\u00e9mon Go to the polls\u201d jokes still make us laugh \u2014 whether we\u2019re mocking Clinton or expressing solidarity with others who keep showing up to vote, even as each passing year leaves us feeling more cynical. <\/p>\n \u201cPok\u00e9mon Go to the polls\u201d is a way of urging others to make the time to vote and take Election Day seriously, while still acknowledging disappointment with aging lawmakers<\/a> who don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to come of age in the social media era. It\u2019s shrouded in enough irony to project a sense of jaded detachment, yet remains a desperate, earnest plea to our friends: Please, just go vote.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Screenshot-2026-11-03-at-11.26.31-AM.png\")
A Google Trends analysis of the search term \u201cpokemon go to the polls\u201dImage Credits:A Google Trends analysis of the search term “pokemon go to the polls” \/<\/p>\n