Adventures in Pokemon Go

(I spent the morning exploring the area around me, finding pokestops and finding pokemon. One of my closest pokestops is at a small community church a few blocks from my house.)
Me: Sweet! An EGG!
Woman: (coming out of the church) Excuse me?
Me: (thinking ‘busted’) Yes?
Woman: People have been pulling up and looking at their phones and leaving all morning. What’s going on? Is it a scavenger hunt?
Me: Oh, uh, I guess, in a way it is? (I show her my phone and try to explain the game)
Woman: Look, they have our picture on here! And they got our pride flag in the shot, that’s so nice! I’m the pastor, should I put up a sign? “Welcome, Pokemon”?
Me: “Pokemon Trainers Welcome” might be a bit better, but sure.
Woman: What’s that?
Me: That’s a gym. It’s at the pizza parlor over by the park?
Woman: The pizza parlor gets a gym?
Me: That’s where people go to fight, they come here to get supplies and healing things.
Woman: Okay, that is more appropriate. I’m getting this game.

krakenqueen:

corseque:

feynites:

The hilarious thing about watching people talk about their experiences with pokemon go is that I just keep remembering all the edgy ‘realistic’ pokemon reinterpretations that used to go around, and how ‘no the pokemon world would be SO DARK you guys’.

And now there are people going around IRL catching pokemon and they’re just like ‘I WENT OUT AND MADE TWENTY NEW FRIENDS AND FOUND AN EEVEE AND EEVEE IS ALSO MY FRIEND!!!’

So it seems the pokemon setting actually was pretty damn accurate.

I was just at a park by a lake with crowds of people as thick as if there was a fair, all playing Pokemon Go. People rode by on bikes, trying to hatch eggs (one was playing the bicycle theme song on a speaker). The only thing people talked about was Pokemon.

It looked and sounded exactly like I was actually walking down a Route in a Pokemon game. The whole thing was completely surreal.

You know, I’ve never played nor been an ounce interested in pokemon, but the fact that this game has managed to get people out and socializing more with a goal is pretty damn cool.