Pokemon Go!

I see a shitload of posts about people playing Pokemon Go on my Facebook, Twitter, and news feeds, and I am starting to see some backlash now, with people saying that they should "grow up", or that there are mysterious and undefined problems with the game itself that will lead to death or something.

To these people I ask, have you ever had fun in your life?

Some background, Pokemon Go is an ARG, or Augmented Reality Game, for your smartphone, you download the app and the game uses Google Maps and your camera to render the world as if it had silly little monsters in it that you can track down and capture. I am unable to play as my phone is a piece of crap and doesn't even like downloading mandatory system updates, let alone optional apps.

Overwhelmingly I see stories of people going outside, meeting new friends, exploring the world, and having a good time, these are traditionally things we are told to do instead of playing video games, and now there is a game that wants us to do it, and rewards us enough that we want to do it too, and detractors are trying to say it is a bad thing?

I dunno man, I mean I get it if Pokemon isn't your thing, but I can't look at literally millions of people of all ages having fun and growing relationships and communities and see that as a bad thing. You could argue that is it unfortunate that it took a video game to get people outside, but I rather suspect if it was just a meetup app of some variety that no one would complain at all.

I love this stuff, ARG's are neat and seem unlikely to do more harm than good as we move forward, remember we live in a world that I feel is inevitably heading to the death of mandatory labor for survival, and I can think of a lot worse things to do with free time than explore the world and make friends, regardless of what tools you use to do it.