Pokémon GO, Social Acceptance, and Hypocrisy
So now that Pokémon GO is cool, why are you not playing it? In the words of Miss Havisham, Are you sullen and obstinate?
Like most of the 25-ish, I grew up with Pokémon (Blue and Gold, specifically). I had my fair shares of surfing up and down along the coast of Cinnabar Island. I went through the period of emptiness aftermath of beating the Elite Four. I have also heard that you could catch Mew at Route 24, and the deck of Pokémon card that I never really did figure out still exist somewhere in the heap of things that I classified as childhood stuffs.
Like many of the 25-ish, 15 years between then and now, Pokémon remained a fond thread, swimming deep in the abyss of our memories, never resurface. That said, I did not touch any version since the one that was released in 1999. When GO came out, I was very excited about everything around it; the technology, the company, the future of augmented reality, everything, except the gameplay. Partly due to personal gaming preference, other being my lack of social needs. Ultimately, I wasn’t peer pressured into playing Pokémon GO nor did I find it very much worth my humbling time, I’m indifferent to it, that’s all.
Pokémon wasn’t cool, Pokémon GO is cool
Over the years in absentia, I had nevertheless hear people of my age talk Pokémon. As I have found out, The ghost of Pokémon lives on in Nintendo 3DS. As I have also found out, the socially correct and acceptable reaction to an adult playing Pokémon was somewhere along the line of Wow, (s)he’s still playing that?, What a nerd!, or in millennial’s term, lol…
I must admit, that these thoughts did creep into my mind initially, so in a way I’m very much the same person that I’m condemning.
One inexorable conversation with a friend (let’s call her S) a year ago revealed that exact sentiment; a mutual friend of ours (let’s call him H) was denounced for playing Pokémon. As though it were the Middle Ages all over again, S pulled out that Malleus Maleficarum of hers, decreed the sins that H had committed, and proceed to burn H on the stake with words like virgin, nerd, no life, and other atrocities. Just because Pokémon wasn’t cool a year ago.
Needless to say, S was one the Pokémon GO pioneer, bought the first class seat on the GO train.
Note that I’m not undermining the novelty of this game, nor am I in anyway against it. The game is, in fact, quite well done, and there are psychology behind its attraction and addictiveness. Naturally, people adopted it out of interest and nostalgia, many also, out of social conformance and acceptance. These are all fine and dandy. Do that which makes you happy, but Don’t do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you.
Wind back to that witch-hunting session, flabbergasted as I was of her opinion, I found myself protecting our Pokémon-playing friend. All in all, I saw in her my own general lack of empathy towards relationships and worldly affairs. I saw in her the harm that could’ve been done to those of us who doesn’t contort ourselves to the opinion of this world. I saw in her the bandwagon of Pokémon GO. The bandwagon full of corpses of whom society disparaged for being uncool, and standing upon which — the finest hypocrisy of the world.