I am not playing Pokemon GO. But neither am I one of those cranky old fuddy-duddys who’s making fun of people who are.
I am, instead, one of those people who were simply born in that very specific date range where Pokemon means absolutely nothing to me whatsoever. I was too old when they first came out, and I was again too old when the videogames started coming out, and I remain too old and too limited in my free time to pay attention to it now. This is not me complaining; this is me simply being realistic.
Normally I get that “Fear Of Missing Out” anxiety when 90% of my Twitter feed is about something that I’m not actively participating in, but not in this case. Even if I were to download it – and I may still do it, just out of pure curiosity – I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do with any of the various Pokethings I might come across, nor would I bother looking for any of the various Pokemon Go explainers that have popped up.
I’m also not sure how long this mania is going to last. Remember just a short while ago, when Miitomo was all the rage? Has anyone even looked at that thing in, say, the last 3 weeks?
I must stress, again, that I don’t hate Pokemon GO; I just don’t care about it. I’m not reflexively angry about it, like all those idiots who hate the new Ghostbusters film without having seen it. To those of you who are currently obsessed with it – please, by all means, tell me about it. Is it approachable for the Pokemon neophyte, or do you have to already know how Pokemon works before bothering with it? And does it kill your phone battery as quickly as I hear it does? My iPhone 6’s battery is already starting to wither and die if I use it too much – like today, for instance, where I caught a 7:45am train with my battery at 95% and got into the office a little before 9:00am with the battery all the way down to 53%, and that was just because I was listening to Spotify and reading Twitter. I worry that if, by some chance, I did end up downloading it and starting playing it during my various walks, that my phone would simply catch on fire.
I know it seems silly to write up a blog post to announce that I’m NOT playing the thing that everyone else in the world is playing, but I felt it important to differentiate myself from the other various thinkpieces out there.
Shouts From The Couch 