Ten years later, ‘Pokémon Go to the polls’ still haunts the internet
- ID
- 42646
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 04 Nov 2026, 3:04 AM
- Fetched
- 04 Nov 2026, 3:39 AM
- Provider
- TechCrunch
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/03/ten-years-later-pokemon-go-to-the-polls-still-haunts-the-internet/
- Source URL
- https://techcrunch.com/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 1.5
- Created
- 04 Nov 2026, 3:40 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coderssaas_founders
What happened
TechCrunch marks the ten-year anniversary of Hillary Clinton's 2016 Virginia rally line — "I'm trying to figure out how we get them to have Pokémon Go to the polls" — which became a durable Election Day meme. The piece traces what changed since: campaigns now hire meme managers, podcasters get press briefings, and Pokémon Go itself has been sold to a company wholly owned by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund. Its only builder-relevant claim is a passing aside that "most app developers aren't even writing their own code anymore, thanks to AI," offered without evidence.
Why it matters
There is no concrete action here for a Malaysian builder. The one line that touches your work — the assertion that most app developers no longer write their own code — is an unsupported aside in a culture retrospective, not a measurement, so it should not move any decision about your stack, hiring, or tooling. If you want to talk about AI's effect on how apps get built, this article gives you a quote to argue with, not data.
Discussion angle
Use it as a 60-second icebreaker only: the article asserts as fact that most app developers no longer write their own code — ask the room whether that matches what they see in Malaysian teams, and what evidence anyone actually has either way.