The latest flash in the pan to take the world by storm is Pokemon Go. The game is a spinoff of one of Nintendo’s most popular video games – Pokemon – which spawned cartoons, fluffy toys, comics, trading card games and tonnes of other memorabilia back in 1995.
Fast forward 20+ years into the handheld technology era, and we are now witnessing the phenomenon of Pokemon Go. People download the game and literally walk around and catch (and steal apparently) mythical Pokemon creatures, ranging from the lowly Zubat to the iconic yellow Pikachu.
Men, women and children run around and catch them as they consult a virtual reality map on their smartphone, levelling up as they go. It sounds crazy to hear fully grown adult men phoning each other and telling each other to go to a particular spot to catch this Pokemon or that. It probably is a bit crazy. But some are saying that there are benefits. It might be true. People are getting out and about and smartphones are being used to actually let families communicate through spoken words, face to face, rather than faces being buried in tablets.
But, as always, things start to border on the absurd. It is understood that there have been car crashes around the world, including here in Malta as people try to catch Pokemons as they are driving. In Guatemala, the murder capital of the world, a teenager was killed as he tried to break into a house to catch an imaginary creature.
We have even heard how people knocked on the front door of a Valletta parish priest, asking him to open the church because there was apparently a very rare Pokemon inside. It’s enough to make you shake your head in disbelief.
But, each unto their own. The main thrust of what is being said here is not to denigrate people’s pastimes, far from it. The aim here is to try and encourage people to at least enjoy the game safely. It stands to reason that if texting or talking on the phone while driving, then trying to catch an imaginary creature by throwing balls at it is equally, if not far more dangerous.
The same goes for walking in the street, if your attention is totally consumed by a handheld device, you could walk out onto a road, get hit by a car, or even walk off a cliff. It has happened before and if people are not careful it will happen again.
Older people are also expressing frustration that people bump into them while walking down the street because they are glued to their phones. We are sure that the situation holds true for Pokemon.
And on a final note, technology has truly changed our lives. Whether Pokemon can fit into that bracket is totally up to individual interpretation. But surely, as we have seen from online footage, fighting over imaginary creatures is surely not representative of what the 21st Century is supposed to be about – but then again, it actually might be 100 per cent accurate. What a world we live in.