It’s not often that I find myself defending corporations and their capitalist ploys, but when I read Brian Hickey’s article in the PhillyVoice titled “Enough with the pumpkin-spice craze, sheeple,” — yes, Hickey really used the term sheeple — I felt defensive.

Bashing Starbucks’ widely-known autumn beverage, the pumpkin spice latte, is nothing new. Hickey certainly isn’t the only one to complain about the annual “pumpkinspiceification,” as he puts it, of everyone’s favourite products, from beer to hummus to waffles. However, Hickey is certainly among the more aggressive of the crowd.

Referring to the deluge of pumpkin-themed items as a “cultural abomination” and its consumers as “culinary sheeple,” Hickey argues that the popularity of the pumpkin is evidence that “people will drop hundreds of millions of dollars if an effective marketing campaign/conspiracy hits its sweet spot.”

Um, obviously.

This isn’t new information. This is quite literally how capitalism and marketing work. And of all the capitalist schemes in the world, why is the romanticization of pumpkin so abominable? In 2011, Dr. Pepper launched an ad campaign with the catchphrase “it’s not for women.”

At least Starbucks isn’t using misogyny to sell its products. In fact, its marketing is pretty innocent. The romanticization of seasonal changes should hardly be considered problematic. For those of us who prefer the sunshine of the season prior, every little bit of romanticization helps.

If I want to cope with the unhappier changes — gloomy weather, spending my weekends typing instead of surfing — by buying myself a relatively inexpensive pumpkin-flavoured latte, I’ll fucking do it.

Hickey calls on Len Gigante, a man who literally tried to launch a national anti-pumpkin day five years ago, for backup. Gigante is quoted saying, “It’s just out of hand. [. . .] We don’t eat Christmas trees.”

That’s true, we certainly don’t eat Christmas trees. And most people don’t eat raw pumpkin, either. But if this is an argument that Starbucks frequenters don’t match their winter craze to their autumnal one, Gigante clearly must have forgotten about the peppermint, gingerbread, and eggnog-flavoured lattes that roll into town around mid-November.

Starbucks is an international corporation with no shortage of problems. With paper cups that can’t be recycled, its environmental footprint is bigger than the pumpkin craze itself, and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is infamous for neglecting to follow through on promises made by the company.

These empty promises include providing employees with their schedules a minimum of 10 days ahead of time, and a guarantee of no “clopening” shifts — shifts where the scheduled closer completes their shift only to be the first employee to arrive the next day. Depending on the operational hours of the location, this can mean having as little as five hours’ time between shifts.

If you’re going to get angry about capitalism, I’ll join you in a heartbeat. If you want to boycott Starbucks in favour of local coffee shops (who will also likely feature pumpkin-flavoured products), I’ll buy your drink. But if your inspiration is contempt for a seasonal vegetable, I’ll pass.

In fact, I’ll probably go buy a PSL out of spite.

These past few weeks, we’ve had a fleeting, visceral taste of a dystopia ruled by simulacra, blurred reality, and adorable mascot characters. Software development company Niantic captivated hearts worldwide with the release of Pokémon Go: an augmented reality (AR) game that has helped us all relive our childhood fantasies.

Collecting the original Kanto fauna, tackling gyms in pursuit of being the very best — it’s been a journey that even the most detached from the Pokémon craze have had difficulty withdrawing from. It’s sparked a series of unlikely events — players discovering partners’ infidelity, capturing Pidgeys while spouses give birth, stumbling upon corpses — that has raised a veritable uproar online.

Yet the media’s fixation appears to be tapering off, and like most cultural phenomena, Go is diving back into the dark void beyond public scrutiny. As surreal tweets and memes about the game shrink from a waterfall to a trickle, the game appears to have proven itself little more than a one-hit wonder.

But those who declare this gimmick one-hit KO’d are forgetting something important: the fact that it’s dropping out of immediate sight doesn’t preclude it from being an insanely massive success as a game. It’s far from dead; if anything, it’s the biggest cash Miltank in recent memory.

Take a mean look at these numbers. As of July 12, the American player base alone was spending approximately $1.6 million per day on in-app purchases. Niantic’s net worth was roughly $3.65 billion by July 25. That’s not even getting into the billions the company’s going to be raking in with ad revenue.

If, like me, you a) carry an Apple product everywhere, and b) need a tl;dr because flooding numerals irritate you, check the App Store. Go may be seeing a decline in players, but that’s common sense considering its initial, impossible popularity. As I write, it’s in the #1 spot for Top Grossing and #11 for most popular Free apps.

Meanwhile, the nature, age, and sheer size of the Pokémon franchise make for so many possibilities for expanding this game that it will (almost literally) never lack avenues to be reinvented. Just look at the various handheld games for potential mechanics: battling outside gyms, trading with others, raising friendship, Contests, a pseudo-story mode. . . In other words, Niantic can take this game in pretty much any direction it pleases. That flexibility will charm an enormous player base no matter what happens — whether they be loud or quiet about selling their Pokémon friends to Professor Willow for performance-enhancing drugs.

Even now, people of all walks of life find something to enjoy about Pokémon Go; imagine how wide a net it’ll cast months or years from now. It’s decently accessible, and the interface is, if simplistic, bizarrely addicting. Best of all, what better open world could you ask for than the actual open world?

As the first AR smartphone game to attract international attention, this coveted app might really have the potential to lead us into a totally novel age of gaming. Discussion about it might be stalled for now, but it won’t be forgotten.

With the rest of the franchise moving forward, it’s only logical to assume that Pokémon Go will continue to do so as well. Don’t be quick to dismiss it as fading.