Today we ask at Mein MMO: Are you caught up in the Pokémon Go hype or is it just annoying you right now?
Pokémon Go – Is it still cool if mom plays?
Facebook stopped being cool when everyone’s mom, niece, or grandpa joined. The cool, hip trendsetters, the twenty-somethings find a topic and leave it when the kids or the parent generation catch on.
It could be similar with Pokémon GO. That’s actually a niche topic, a cool “nerd thing” that suddenly is on everyone’s lips due to a mix of summer doldrums, quirky factor, and a perfect storm of “augmented reality”, childhood dream fulfillment, and the Pokémon brand.
It’s dominating not only gaming media but also the general interest press: It appears in morning news, local newspapers, on the radio, just everywhere. And who wants to be involved, who wants to belong, participates, at least tries it out to be able to join the conversation.
And the more it is talked about, the more people want to be part of it.
Pokémon GO – more popular than porn?
Some say: It’s the new hula hoop. An inexplicable “black swan” event, a thing that sometimes just happens. Statistics show that it easily overshadows internet phenomena of recent years like the ice bucket challenge or Gangnam Style. Yes, more people are said to have googled “Pokémon Go” in the last few days than for porn.
But this also comes with a so-called “backlash” phenomenon – what is too popular and keeps coming up can also annoy many. This happens to everyone, even Jennifer Lawrence – and she is actually perfect.
So the first developers are already offering Pokémon blockers that are supposed to guarantee a poke-free internet.
For me: Scientific curiosity
Schuhmann says: I currently feel old because I missed the original Pokémon phenomenon by about 5 years and played with Masters of the Universe as a child, not with Pokémon. Everyone else in the editorial team is 5-10 years younger than me and varying degrees of Poké fans: Ttime, Cortyn, Patrick – all fully into it, the virus has been slumbering in them since childhood. Even the boss, despite early greying, is in his late 20s exactly in the age group for whom a childhood dream is coming true now.
For me as someone “not infected by the hype”, it’s still an exciting phase because I am very interested and excited about the “augmented reality” phenomenon. I am also incredibly curious in a professional sense to find out and see where this is going, as McDonald’s restaurants buy a Pokémon lure for a few euros to attract customers to the restaurant and then offer them a Big Mac.
So the hype does not annoy me. However, I am also not captivated by it. I am curious about it, as I have not experienced this specific phenomenon before and find it much more exciting than “I pour ice water over my head, scream loudly and post it on Facebook.”
What about you and Pokémon GO?
Our question to you: Is the Pokémon hype annoying you right now? Do you disgustedly put down the phone when your mom invites you to go Pokémon hunting in the city? Do you wrinkle your nose when another article on the topic comes up on your favorite website? Do you consider kids looking at their smartphones walking by rivers to be zombies or moon-struck? Or have you also caught the fever and are enjoying all the craziness right now? Do you wake up in the morning and scream “I will be the very best, like no one ever was,” while your girlfriend enthusiastically cheers you on and shouts “Catch them all, Tiger!”
Or are you somewhere in between? What is your stance on Pokémon GO right now?
