By A Correspondent
Finally, a replacement to sex and all our collective vices. The “eighth deadly†sin has arrived: Pokémon Go is here!
Pokémon Go is an inescapable force of nature and a certified game changer! Building on the giant video game franchise created in the ’90s by a Japanese insect collector and game developer, Pokémon Go has become an instrument to take advantage of our hysteria, our reliance on smartphones, the warm fuzziness of nostalgia, and our human thirst for escapism.
The game has only been launched in a handful of countries and they’re trying to launch it across many more but for the craze which is causing the systems to crash with overloads. According to estimates from earlier in the week, Pokémon Go has been downloaded around 7.5 million times.
For context, in 2013 the US Census Bureau estimated that there were 242,470,820 adults in the United States, and according to a 2016 report, 72 percent of adults have smartphones. That means roughly 174,579,000 adults have smartphones they could use to play Pokémon Go; 7.5 million is a fraction of that.
However, it’s worth noting that Pokémon Go has been downloaded more time in a week than the popular dating and hookup app Tinder has in its four years of existence; Pokémon Go is estimated to be on 5 percent of smartphones, while Tinder is only on 2 percent. Hence the allusions in some quarters about how Pokémon Go is now surpassing sex as the most sought after commodity in the digital/virtual world we live in.
Pokémon Go users are also expected to very quickly surpass the number of Twitter users if the game continues its current growth trajectory.
Now, the game has even officially found a way into the 2016 US presidential campaign.
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump started a Pokémon battle with Hillary Clinton after the Democrat mentioned the game in a campaign speech.
Clinton delivered a timely Pokémon joke at a campaign stop telling everyone, “I don’t know who created Pokémon Go, but I’m trying to figure out how we get them to have Pokémon Go…to the polls.â€
The Trump campaign decided it would one-up Clinton, posting a video to Facebook showing a mock-Pokémon Go game called “Crooked Hillary No†in which a user attempts to catch Clinton.
In short, Pokémon Go is benefiting from a perfect storm of millennial nostalgia for the original game and the fact that many of those same millennials spend a lot of time talking about themselves on social media. Throw in the current spate of media coverage surrounding the new craze, and it can feel like everyone is playing it.
Now after all this, imagine what happens when the game launches in India.
Imagine Pokémon Go replacing porn being surfed by our netas …
Imagine the irritating Airtel girl being replaced with Pikachu…
Imagine Pokémon Go creating mass hysteria in the already overflowing masses of humanity on our public transport system, on our roads, highways and across our nation…
Imagine Arnab Goswami becoming part of augmented reality every night at 9 pm and now tossing his guests around now…
Imagine Mewtwo as the new mascot for the Swacch Bharat Campaign and Charizard using the jhadu to sweep up votes for AAP..
Imagine…
Note: for those of us who aren’t crazed pop culture fans or haven’t followed Pokémon over the years, Pikachu, Mewtwo and Charizard are among the most popular Pokémon characters.
Jaideep Shergill, Co-Founder Pitchfork Partners Strategic Consulting LLP is a PR and communication veteran and has always been contrarian about most things, drawing extraordinary amounts of irk and ire from industry peers. He can be reached on jaideep.shergill@pitchforkpartners.com