Most summers I spend hours and hours on a baseball field. Spending days in the sun crisping like toast with close friends. During this time my phone is tucked safely away in my catchers' bag. This being my summer most years, I think about summer in terms of baseball.
I was recently traveling abroad in England with my family and another family. This was the week Pokémon Go came into the public eye. The little boy in the family traveling with us was playing it non-stop. I was intrigued and curious about the game, but at the same time, disturbed that he was flicking away to catch a Charmander in Windsor Castle. This was 'strike one' for Pokémon Go.
A couple weeks later, I was visiting cousins in the suburbs of Birmingham, AL. Every one of my cousins, ranging from 9-19 years of age, was obsessed with the game. I downloaded it to spend time with them. It was very fun and it did bring us together, as we spent time driving around to incubate the eggs that needed a certain number of kilometers to hatch. Yet again, it was a disconnected form of connection with my cousins that used to be made though playing boardgames and pulling pranks on our annoying 2nd cousin. This was 'strike two' for Pokémon Go
The third strike came when a group of 12 year olds wearing snapbacks and tap out t-shirts ran by glued to their iPhones, followed by an older man in the same form not too far behind. "There's an Aerodactle over there, I need to use a masterball for that one!" another couple almost screamed in unison. This was happening in my place of solitude, Walden Pond in Massachusetts. If you have never been to Walden pond, it is where Henry David Thoreau, the 19th Century transcendentalist, went to live as an escape from technology and city life. This place, that for hundreds of years has been Thoreau's vision of a place untouched by modern technology is now being overtaken by Pokémon Go. This was 'strike three, you're out' for Pokémon. After my last visit to Walden Pond, I held down the app on my phone and tapped the X. No regrets.
