>>45881817This comic always summed up how it felt. A large number of fans in 2010 were in their early 20s at the oldest, and there weren't many fans older than that. Yes, hundreds of thousands of people who played the games in 1998-2000 as teenagers and young adults did exist, but Pokémon was huge with kids and they were the bulk of the fandom. They were the ones hiding that they still played Pokémon throughout most of their pre-college years, and I'm sure even most of the older crowd didn't have a huge real life connection with their peers over it.
But look at the sales for the DS. Look at the sales of every DS Pokémon game. Imagine all the children age 4-9 who played Gen V, and then GO hits and they're 9-14, and now they're 14-19. That stigma of playing Pokémon doesn't exist nearly as much for the youth of today, so there isn't this internal bubbling excitement over it.
I remember being in high school in 2010 and the absolute subdued excitement when people noticed that a guy that people liked brought his DS and HeartGold. People gathered around. I remembered one of the more popular dudes admitting that he still played it. I remember another mentioning how some Fire moves can remove the frozen condition. Everyone was just excited to know that there were others, and it was a completely surreal experience to me to witness.
The fandom of today has far more cynicism to it, but I think that it also has more reasons to be cynical.
