Teen Trends: Are Chilean Pokemones Poking Each Others’ Pikachus In Public?

Good news. The above video reveals a new group of obnoxious, Latino youth with stupid hair for us to hate on. They’re called Pokemones, (appropriating childhood icons–edgy), and they like to have parties called “ponceo” in Chile’s public parks that consist of group make out sessions. Now, anyone who’s ever traveled abroad knows parks in other countries are for two things: Buying hash and dry humping. So this doesn’t really seem like news to us. But Newsweek has found a way to turn it into news: Tell everyone the kids are giving each other bj’s in public. And that some of the boys are even pulling the chupa chups with other boys.

The teens call their public orgies ponceo. On a typical Friday afternoon in the Chilean capital of Santiago, hundreds gather in a leafy urban park for a few hours of sexual experimentation. Surrounded by passing strollers, they trade partners multiple times—mostly engaging in anonymous rounds of oral sex. When the party is over, no contact information is exchanged. Same-gender interactions are commonplace, as the lines between hetero- and homosexuality are blurred, partly by the alcohol and drugs consumed, but also by shifting social mores held by Chilean youth, in contrast to their conservative parents.

Actually, in the above video taken from Chilean news media, the kids call their public “orgies” “sobajio” which loosely translated means a “rub-a-thon” as in, let’s all get together and kiss and rub each other. The news report also explains the little whipper snappers actually see this as a way to get off without getting pregnant or contracting STD’s. Even the guy in the white lab coat agrees it’s a safer alternative, but one that could lead to riskier behavior if not kept in check.

More importantly, due to the public/group nature of this trend, unlike the hippies of yore, this sexual revolution is all about buying the right clothes and hair product.

Indeed, the Pokemones are outfitted with the latest clothing and technological gadgets. Their look is androgynous and exaggerated: clad in low-slung, tight-fitting jeans, both boys and girls wear multiple piercings, dyed and waxed hair, and thick black eyeliner. They have their own Web sites, even their own slang, but what does it really mean to be a Pokemon? Curiously, the teenagers do not seem to hold any particular convictions about their identity in a political or sexual sense. Instead, their movement is mostly about image. “It’s basically a fashion thing,” says Raul Barra, a tall 19-year-old with piercings down the sides of his nose. “A Pokemon has a certain style and does ponceo.”

The article goes on to blame post-Pinochet Chile’s obsession with consumerism. Something we as Americans cannot relate to at all.

The introduction of the credit card into the economy has translated into staggering personal debt for many Chileans, but the quest continues to own the newest televisions, computers, and cars. Pokemones take their cue from their parents. “‘To be’ is now interchangeable with ‘to have,’ so teens measure their self-worth according to how much they’ve got—in this case, how many partners they can rack up or how many friends they have on MSN,” says [community psychologist & advocacy director at the Chilean Family Planning Association Juan] Bastian, “Sexuality becomes another iteration of the same model their parents follow: identity expressed through quantity.”

How gauche of those Chilean consumers. It bears mentioning that even on Newsweek’s site, a commenter who claims to live in Chile says that they understand ponceo to be about making out with multiple partners, not engaging in oral sex with them. Which is what we found in the myriad of ponceo and Pokemones videos on YouTube. Of course, if there were oral sex videos, they wouldn’t be allowed on YouTube so that really doesn’t prove anything, does it? There is video evidence of some ponceos (Is that the correct pluralization of ponceo? Who cares? If they can blow each other in the park, we can take liberties with grammar.) taking place in closed quarters, so that could be where the bj’s are happening, but such an event would hardly be newsworthy here in America. Heck, there was a Lifetime movie about that kind of thing four years ago. So we put it to you, readers. Anyone seen any blowjob parties in the parks of Chile during your travels? Can we get a witness?

Rebels Without Cause [Newsweek]