The Not So Revolutionary Idea of Finding Your People

Community is vital. Can we survive the incoming mass loneliness?

Tricycle Club of the Century Village Retirement Community Meets Each Morning. Photographer: Schulke, Flip

Scorching 23 degrees Celsius. Only in Australia, I tell you. Autumn is arriving and, still buzzing in the air — with words such as UV and cancer, and the sounds of spray sun protection — there’s the survival of summer. The docks at Melbourne are usually deserted despite the many societal and economic efforts that the state of Victoria has put into it. It’s a beautiful area, with good views, restaurants, and the sound of dragon boaters training in the harbour, yet virtually deserted most days of the year. Today, a walking mass of people, phones out, and quirky hats on, walks as a unified cybernetic crowd. One minute in, I can put my hand on fire (anything metal at the moment) that a Pokémon Go event is happening.

As a reminder of more academic times, the highest grade I achieved during my master’s was for a teamwork project on Consumer Attitudes and Behaviours, where we researched, wrote about, and experimented with Pokémon Go. Nowadays, I play Pokémon TCG Pocket because my partner and some friends do — though I have little intrinsic motivation to do so.

The video game that spawned a universe of cute, derpy monsters was born in Japan just a couple of years after I was born in Italy. I’d like to…