I'm bored, so I'll just take the bait.
Today, it's been discovered that Russian meddling extended to
Pokemon Go among other social media platforms.
Okay, according to the article. The don't shoot us website directed people to a Tumblr account that made a contest for people to play Pokémon Go to go to locations where police brutality occured. The prizes were Amazon gift cards but apparently there was no evidence of anyone entering.
I'll quote this from the article:
CNN has not found any evidence that any Pokémon Go users attempted to enter the contest, or whether any of the Amazon Gift Cards that were promised were ever awarded -- or, indeed, whether the people who designed the contest ever had any intention of awarding the prizes.
"It's clear from the images shared with us by CNN that our game assets were appropriated and misused in promotions by third parties without our permission," Niantic, the makers of Pokémon Go, said in a statement provided to CNN.
"It is important to note that Pokémon GO, as a platform, was not and cannot be used to share information between users in the app so our platform was in no way being used. This 'contest' required people to take screen shots from their phone and share over other social networks, not within our game. Niantic will consider our response as we learn more."
But, my main point is that the release of Sun and Moon always irked me. Not the official release, that was the 18th of November, but the release a large amount of the Internet was waiting for was when the games would be leaked to the net and we'd be able to digest everything they had to offer. It happened with X&Y, and it was sure to happen to Sun and Moon...but when?
November 8th, 2016. The day of the election. Now I don't know if this was something that was planned longterm, but when it happened I found it rather funny. I went to the election booth myself and made sure to vote, but otherwise I was glued to my computer until I had to go to work as the information drifted out. I know we had quite a few people on GAF doing the same thing.
You claim that a Pokémon leak was distracting you from being able to vote but apparently didn't prevent you from going to work...
That being said, with the idea that Russia loved to meddle with the election the secretiveness takes on a whole different level---was this one of Russia's many Social Media strategists doing this specifically on Election Day? As to why they would do it, well, a lot of young folks probably weren't eager to get out and vote in the first place, and those who might have would've likely skipped out on it if something better came along---say, learning about all the cool new stuff in Sun and Moon? Sure, /vp/ may be seen as Trump voters and thus working against that, but I imagine /vp/ was the best way to get it to spread around the more liberal areas of the net and the net benefit of distracting young Hillary voters probably outweighed those who would've voted Trump.
You're using a lot of speculation without backing it up with evidence. Your CNN article doesn't even help with that.
So, that's my theory. Someone with ties to Russia, or sympathetic to Trump, obtained an early copy of Sun and Moon and leaked it to the Internet on Election Day to distract young liberals from going to the polls.
Wrong conclusion. Someone leaked Pokémon Sun and Moon to... Leak the game.
_____
Symptoms:
- Connects the dots: Uses superficial claims to link events together.
- Fails to provide strong arguments with reputable evidence. Relies heavily on speculation.
- Is taking an actual event and turning it into something involving a greater organisation.
Conclusion:
Congratulations OP, you are a conspiracy theorist.