Pokémon GO as ideology
example · Video Game: Pokémon GO ·
retold in 3 talks
Žižek uses the augmented-reality game Pokémon GO, where players overlay virtual creatures onto physical reality via a smartphone screen, to illustrate how ideology functions as a fantasmatic supplement that makes bare reality meaningful and desirable. Nazi antisemitism made Germans see a Pokémon called 'the Jew'; religious believers see God pop up; an anti-immigrant version would have Muslim rapists lurking everywhere.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“Did Hitler not offer the Germans the fantasy frame of Nazi ideology, which made them to see a specific Pokémon, the Jew, popping up all around?”
“ideology is the primordial version of augmented reality... did Hitler not offer the Germans the fantasy frame of Nazi ideology which made them see a specific Pokémon, the Jew?”
“ideology is augmented reality in this sense that you you look at reality and ideologically structures the space so that you see more”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
augmented reality (as ideology)
×3
objet petit a
×2
ideological dream
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Aaron Bastani1François Fillon1Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz1Carl Fredrik Mörck1Charlton Heston1Stephen Boyd1Jean-Luc Mélenchon1Cecil B. DeMille1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Žižek uses the augmented-reality game Pokémon GO, where players overlay virtual creatures onto physical reality via a smartphone screen, to illustrate how ideology functions as a fantasmatic supplement that makes bare reality meaningful and desirable. Nazi antisemitism made Germans see a Pokémon called 'the Jew'; religious believers see God pop up; an anti-immigrant version would have Muslim rapists lurking everywhere., illustrating augmented reality (as ideology),ideological fantasy,objet petit a
Pokémon Go adds a digital fantasy frame to grey reality so players see virtual creatures superimposed on real locations. Žižek uses this to illustrate how ideology does exactly this: it adds a fantasy entity (the Jew, the Arab rapist) that makes confused reality readable and meaningful., illustrating augmented reality of ideology,objet petit a,zero signifier
Pokémon GO adds a figure (Pokémon) to reality, making it interesting. Žižek analogizes ideology to this AR: it structures reality to reveal an 'object cause of desire' (e.g., the Jew for Hitler) that makes the world coherent., illustrating ideology as augmented reality,object cause of desire