My Thesis on Pokemon Go

I want to start this conversation by saying my reflections on Pokemon Go are neither endorsing nor condemning the game itself. What I am most interested in are the broader social, cultural, and ethical implications that this movement has highlighted for me.

First of all, I have just referred to this game as a movement, and indeed it is. There have been many movements in the twentieth century; Pro Life, Occupy Wall Street, Veganism and Black Lives Matter to name a few. But I would be so bold as to say that none of these movements,(or any other movement I can think of) were able to spontaneously and instantaneously collect 3000+ people into one centralized location the way that a rare pokemon spawning in Central Park did.

As I have tried to balance briefly skimming and blatantly ignoring the overwhelming amount of pro and anti-Pokemon posts in my Facebook feed, one statement stuck out to me in particular. Someone was saying that in today’s world, with all the evils and corruptions we see happening globally, it’s nice for people to have a way to check out and have some fun for once. This instantly sent up a million red flags for me and damn near broke my heart.

Obviously we are collectively noticing that things in our society are not ideal. And if we perpetuate the idea that using escapism is the best way to deal with these issues, we’ve lost the battle before it’s even begun. If there is a general consensus that reality is so unbearable that we desire more and more experiences in a virtual one, THIS to me is a greater cause for a large group of people to congregate. Also, to say that we need to find a way to relieve ourselves downplays the fact that this app is only one of many other socially acceptable forms of escapism including alcohol, drugs, cellphones, computers, televisions, cinema, and pop culture in general, which have all become rampant parts of our contemporary day to day lives. Lastly, I’d like to call attention to the types of people who are most readily able to use this game: you must have a cell phone, you must be able to afford extraneous data, and you must have the extra time to invest playing. This means that those who are the most liberated, richest, and privileged people in the world are also the ones who can most readily ignore and defer the problems we as a civilization are facing.

But I am still not placing the blame onto the people who are playing this game. I’m not even going to say that there is any person to blame period. What I see as happening with increasing rapidity over my lifetime, and will only be magnified in future generations, is the unsolicited educational and moral lessons being taught to our children (and adults-let’s not forget the average person playing Pokemon Go is 28 years old) by technology itself. And without sufficient critical and ethical implications being taken more seriously, this is something we could easily loose control of.

When I was young my parents bought me a dog. It taught me how to care about something outside of myself. It taught me how to be responsible and diligent. If I didn’t feed my puppy and walk him every day, he would be unwell. No matter how well I treated him, eventually my puppy would die, and this taught me how to love regardless of inevitable  loss, and how to deal with grief. While I was learning these lessons Tamagotchis and Furbies were becoming all the rage. But the lessons these children learned were different. A Tamagotchi teaches you that you only need to care when you feet like it. If you neglected these toys for several weeks it was no big deal. They could be ignored or ultimately forgotten with no real repercussions. What this taught was the value of easily disposable relationships. Now you may say I put too much premium on how toy interactions affect you, but then comes along online friends. You can pick and choose these people carefully. And if anything goes sour, the delete button is just one push away. It becomes so much easier to reject someone when you can’t see the look on their face or the quiver in their voice. And there are literally hundreds more “friends” where that came from. And why even make friends? The virtual world offers you the perfect relationship. A Pokemon won’t ever frustrate you. They’re not going to have a bad day and call you a terrible name. And they certainly aren’t going to deny you anytime you need them. Night or day, just flip the switch. Although these types of interactions can be exciting, valuable, and comforting, I believe they have lead to an increased intolerance of our imperfect human world, and imperfect human interactions.

One of the biggest problems humanity collectively faces is one of tolerance and acceptance. Some of the cruelest deeds are being committed because people with a different religion, nationality or sexual preference are seen as a threat. We need people more than ever to be on the front lines of our messy human world figuring out how to achieve this and it has to start from the bottom up. A child who grows up learning how to pick and choose friendships based off of people who are exactly like themselves creates a breeding ground for intolerance. We need people making genuine human connections with a diverse group of people.

But wait! You say….Isn’t that exactly what Pokemon Go is doing? Getting people out into the real world?

In the weeks that Pokemon Go has been released, we’ve seen more and more people outside “interacting”...which begs the question-why was there no reason to go outside before?  And what is now meant by human interaction? One may have previously been safe to say that there would be a minimum of verbal communication, and a shared activity. But when that shared activity is looking into a screen, and the communication (if there is any) is centered around one extremely narrow and specific topic matter, how does this change the way we relate to one another? If we reach out to screens because human relationships are hard, do we gain any meaningful interactions or social finesse by interacting this way?

Technology has engulfed our lives so quickly that we have not culturally developed a sense of etiquette surrounding it. While some people are great at self regulating, a vast majority are not. From my own personal experience this is something that we direly need to develop if we believe that the people around us are of any value. I didn’t get my first cellphone until I was twenty. And I can not count the number of times that I was ghosted by a room of people who were staring at their cell phones or completely sucked into a video game. Having shared experiences and the ability to have fun are a wonderful privilege. But who is invited to feel like they belong in these situations? Have we created a culture where use of technology is synonymous with being seen as a valuable/capable social creature?

Depiste my general hesitance towards pop culture there is one Spider Man quote that has always stuck with me:
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

How do we take the notion of power away from an abstract concept of flying and laser beams and put it in a concrete way into the heads of North American citizens?

How do we teach our society to understand moderation?

How do we harness the power we have when we come together in massive groups?

How do we get our generation to care just as much about being a global citizen as being a Poke Master?
I WANT TO BE THE VERY BEST. LIKE NO ONE EVER WAS.

And to do this, I have to be able to stop questioning if I am more important than a machine.

Modern technology has proven to be the most genius thing that humanity has ever achieved. But only if we can use it in a genius way. This means utilizing it to help us relieve stress, to help us get exercise and to be more social, but also using it to help us be critical and reflective of our underlying structures and beliefs.

As someone who feels like one of the very few who is on the outside of the Pokemon Go phenomenon I can not believe how much of an emotional response this has caused for me. Right now it’s one a.m. in the morning and I should be in bed. But I had to speak. I had to question. Which puts me in the most ironic position I may have ever been in. I want to talk to a human. I want to have intellectual conversations and debates about these topics. But I have no idea who to reach out to who hasn’t been entirely embroiled in this technological world. So here I am. Confessing to my computer instead. So I get it. 100%. To everyone out there playing this game, I understand the allure of the machine. I understand how blissful it feels to feel like you belong to something bigger, to have motivation to participate, to feel successful and advance, and to surrender to a place of play and joy.

But I also want you to know that all those things exist in this world too. And that I am not asking you to give up cyberspace completely. But come visit sometime. Because I have missed you for a very long time.