This is honestly not a joke thread.
And I'm not saying Nintendo or Game Freak were involved.

Today, it's been discovered that Russian meddling extended to Pokemon Go among other social media platforms.

First, I have to show off my Pokemon knowledge and make the joke that Team Rocket are off-handedly said to have a branch in Russia in RBY/FRLG, located in either Tiksi or Podkamennaya Tunguska depending on which localization you're using.

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.

But the leak originated on the 4chan Pokemon Board, /vp/. Now we don't know anything about the person who was leaking it, other than they went by the tag "Lurantis" and had acquired the game through some illicit means. They were careful about what they posted to protect their identity, and generally secretive---now it most circumstances this isn't suspicious. I mean it is technically since what he's doing is illegal, but otherwise most people who leak games are secretive.

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.

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.