Gotta Catch 'Em All: How Society Hates a Kid's Game (Part 1) - Logical Fallacy in Online Memes

This past week, I, alongside thousands of others embarked in the same great quest the show was premised on following the U.S. release of the Pokemon Go app. The location-based, augmented reality game lets users find the same coveted critters we grew up with. (I must confess, the novelty of “catching” is quite relentless!)

 

Yet, shortly after, dissent started to brood on Internet-land… How could a kids-based game actually become so despised? Seriously. Well, because people love to attach personal agendas/meanings to anything.

In a college Public Speaking course, I was introduced to commonly misused association patterns, called logical fallacy. This concept is define as "a pattern of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in logical structure."

First, let’s take a look at one of the most common types of logical fallacies: False analogy. This compares two things that aren’t similar enough to compare:

A judgment of "manliness"?

Hunting v. hunting?

Public safety v. Marijuana debate
(Stoners are loving that one)

The second is called Placing Blame Elsewhere, which avoids the issues by attacking something else. This sometimes overlaps another fallacy called Ad hominem: an attack against an opponent’s character instead of against an argument. 

Both seem to commonly to used in reference to Generational differences. In fact, a coworker told me about juvenoia, a newly-coined phrase (juvenile + paranoia) by David Finkelhor in 2010. It's defined as “fear or hostility directed by an older generation toward a younger one, or toward youth culture in general.” 

Unsurprisingly, the PoGo phenomenon has fired-up traditional concerns over adolescent’s priorities (e.g. Jobs, Physical Activity). Here are a couple:

Of course, these issues are more complex than what a meme depicts. Instead of making hasty generalizations (another fallacy), we need to use logic & reason to understand the broader picture.