When my friend asked if I wanted to go to Long Island for a two-day trip to the beach, I was almost disappointed by what was drawing me to it most. Obviously, I was drawn by the allure of water-type Pokemon that I could catch on the beach. But this got me thinking on how much this little app meant to me and on what the non-Pokemon playing world sees in the game.
I was never a big Pokemon player. I was actually way more into Yu-Gi-Oh, and I had trouble understanding the whole Pokemon scene. That was until everyone all of a sudden about two years ago decided to download emulators on their phones to play Pokemon Emerald. In and out of school everyone was grinding away, catching Electrikes and defeating gyms. Even then, though, I still didn’t feel connected with the game.
There was a whole generation of people growing up on Pokemon, and I was missing out. Fast forward to today and you see me strolling Long Island after dark with a group of friends to hit the best PokeStops. So I realized that to me, Pokemon GO has meant understanding a piece of culture to which I had been blind for my entire childhood. Imagine missing out on an entire genre of music that everyone was into when you were young. Now that you’re older, that music glues together people who listened together. I finally have a connection to the people who played Pokemon, including some of my greatest friends.
Now to the people who have never understood Pokemon, nor the current craze of Pokemon GO, thank you for not overreacting. We all understand that going out into the world to catch virtual creatures, possibly at the expense of our safety, is an odd behavior. We all see the news reports of people being lured into thefts and being attacked while caught off guard. Still, thank you for realizing that these incidents are few and far between and not judging too harshly when you see a group of kids with their eyes glued to their phones as they walk the street.
I have to be honest that I was expecting a much bigger outrage against the app. Back when the original teaser trailer came out for the game, I couldn’t believe there were actual plans for producing the game. When the first bits of information came out announcing how the app would function, even with little to work on, it was easy to see that there would be both a huge following of the game and a huge resistance against allowing kids to wander the streets to play the game. I was expecting a massive ad campaign sponsored by the terribly misinformed corporate powerhouses like the ones H3H3 makes fun of here.
Surprisingly, we haven’t gotten that yet. Every news report that I’ve seen talk about the game gives the facts of the issues it presents, then moves on to the positive aspects of the game, which include interactivity and the pressure on people to get outside and get moving. A friend of mine even pointed out that Michelle Obama has been spending years and a fair deal of money on getting kids to go outside and get active, but Pokemon GO has eclipsed that effort in a startlingly short time. The news stations seem to get that a campaign against the game contradicts the wishes of so many parents that even the scare tactics they so often employ are of no use here.
