One of Mom's favorite lines to hit us with when we tried leveraging a decision using the line "but everyone is doing it." was: "well if everyone else were jumping off a bridge, would you too?" Well, I believe the week of July 6, 2016 gave us that answer. For clarification, that is the week we learned of the true speed at which information is spread amongst millennials. Within 10 days, (how long it took me to cave and get the game myself) it had 10 million downloads on the iOS store. That's a staggering number considering a good part of that population is probably people that didn't log 10 hours on a Pokémon game beforehand. For one reason or another, Pokémon had a stigma to it (in my own experience) for being games that the "cool kids" wouldn't play. Considering I was born in 1996 and the first Pokémon game was released before then, my perspective is understood to have an asterisk on it, but I believe is still relevant considering how much Pokémon I've played - more than enough.

Maybe I'm just jaded about cool kids not playing Pokémon because I was mocked for playing it back in the day. I scoffed at getting the app because of this experience, but now there seems to be an opportunity to enjoy Pokémon without shame. At first maybe, but now that I'm about 24 hours in, I've realized that the hysteria of tracking through grass in search of the right creature is far from a novel one for me than it is for so many giving Pokémon a fair shake lately. I'd imagine that some of them may had never know the thrill of grinding and evolving that right Pokémon. Yet, they're gassing up and taking road trips to find Poke-stops and gyms alike.

I recall the many hours put into classics such as Pokémon Silver and Emerald on the Gameboy Advance when it wasn't nearly as cool beating the Elite Four as it is now catching Squirtle in the bathroom. The about-face by some (presumably) to carry the torch that was kept burning by the gaming community who shamelessly completed their Pokedex before it was a feat to catch Magikarp for the 4th time. I guess it comes down to the fact that there's enough talk about the new fad now, so it's acceptable to spend X amount of hours now stocking Pokeballs.

I guess Mom was on to something; she knew that if enough people were doing something and encouraging others to do it, their kid might do it too.