Pokémon GO: how Evolving Pokémon is Devolving us

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Last night, I joined my sister and her partner on a journey through the urban jungle that is Melbourne, looking for additional great spots to discover and catch Pokémon in Pokémon GO. Since it has become most everyone's pastime, in order to feel somewhat of a human connection I have been left with no choice but to bribe fellow persons to spend time with me via luring them into an augmented world. Since joining the sheeple, I have noticed that the only form of 'social time' I have acquired is when we communicate to one another about the spotting of new Pokémon, as well as the locations of the Pokéstops that sit closest to one another so as to spawn more and more of these digital creatures. Ultimately, all form of communication has been used within and for the purpose of excelling within the game, especially when it comes to adventuring to the nearest junk food distributors to re-energize and to leave behind human waste.

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But through partaking in this newfound madness, I have found that my need to observe has overcome my need to play, which has lead me to witness firsthand the decay of socializing and of basic human function. Because my endeavors mainly take place on evenings, I have been staring in awe at multiple strangers' faces, aglow with their phone screens, necks strained as heads are bowed in subservience to technological advancements. It is a worrying sight. It is moreso worrying that I have spent so much time seated in the same position with my head down. And to what gain? I am yet to feel fulfilled. If anything, the game is for one minute of pleasure and a lifetime of pain because we have found ways to deter its initial partial objective, which is to explore the world around us, by sitting in a car and driving to locations and waiting for Pokémon to come to us. Despite the obvious mental and physical health concerns, however, my primary concern is that players are spending more time playing the game than considering a creation of their very own. That is the very niche of what it is like to follow rather than lead.

The only people who have impressed me are those who are finding and using special source codes to hack the game in order to spawn their own creatures and discover the game's limitations. Users who perform this are showing a higher level of thinking, one that manipulates an already-made platform so as to render it unique. Another set of impressive people who have revealed themselves in lieu of those who follow are those using the game to commit crimes. In both circumstances, we observe that offenders are ones who divulge from the original intended path that the game was primarily created for. My central argument is that divulging from a set task, divulging from the main activities of the status quo is beneficial for one.

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No. I am not condoning illegal actions, rather I am condoning actions that do not leave one to follow, rather to lead. An instance of this within a game occurs in Garry's Mod, a sandbox physics game based on the idea of a literal sandbox: the aim of the game is to create a variant of the game itself by tweaking the virtual world so as to make it your own. As its website states, 'there aren't any objectives - you can't lose, and you definitely can't win'. Firstly, the game boasts the lack of competition. Objective is based on what the player sees fit, and therefore leaves the player in a realm of safety from outside pressures. Here, one is free to perform without the constraints of set goals, maintaining the feeling that anything is possible. And anything is indeed possible, as the game reaches far to the nether regions of each budding player's creativity. It is a collaborative experience, teeming with opportunities to be discovered.

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Pokémon GO, in juxtaposition, is based on the premise that you 'gotta catch 'em all', or in the avant garde premise, 'capture as many Pokémon as you can' - but if you as well as millions of others indeed catch them all, then what? Yes, if each of your Pokémon reach the maximum combat levels and you conquer gyms and you catch legendary Pokémon then all you are doing is competing with millions of others with the same objectives, thus making the game painfully repetitive and not at all rewarding. One, in Pokémon GO, only panders to the game's initial objective, straying away from the utter fact that one is constantly repeating motions, duplicating actions and reciprocating two mutual feelings: loss or defeat. Conquering is somewhat impossible for you cannot conquer something designed to leave you scrambling for more. It is in this sense that the game is indeed totalitarian. One is subservient to Niantic and the motives that have framed the most downloaded app in a first week ever.

If anything, the inflation of virtual reality that is Pokémon GO is deflating our sense of humanity. We are struggling to collect little forms of data in order to evolve them into new forms of data and in turn, are devolving ourselves, devolving from our advances. This is surely something to add to our sense of lack of purpose, lack of raisons d'etre, and soon we will reach a new low; though, hopefully the new low will be reached with our dignity, and not with our degenerating postures.

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Pokémon GO: the hunt for Pikachu: a narration by David Attenborough*

A hunched back, an aching neck, legs overworked, both hands grasping the smartphone, eyes glued to its phone screen and all attention waiting on a single beep or a change of pixels, the human is on the prowl for more Pokémon. This human, mind you, has scarcely found initiative to leave its habitat prior to this. It had no reason to leave the comforting glows of its television or computer screen, after just having gotten over the glow on its phone screen. First, Netflix, and now Pokémon GO.

Armed with two portable phone chargers, some in-game incense and Pokéballs, the human makes the call to fellow humans. Together, they enter its automobile and drive at 30mph through its neighbourhood, careful, the driver too, not to miss any Pokémon on their way, and also mindful to cheat the Pokémon egg hatching system. Humans are cunning creatures, outsmarting the smartest of devices in order to exploit what they offer for what seems to be no benefit. At the end of each hunt, each human comes home empty handed, but with a digital archive full of animated rarities. Outside of the vehicle, many other humans can be seen glued to their phones, embarking on yet another day's journey, their young also joining them on their own phones, as offspring so little as just three years old have also joined the journey to be the very best, like no one ever was.

Today, after having spent almost an entire week on their phones, this group of humans is after one particular Pokémon: the ever so elusive Pikachu. This short yellow rodent, stubby in stature, is thunderingly charismatic. Armed with a cute looking face, do not let it fool you for innocence. Stored in its seemingly innocent reddened cheeks are thunderbolts, ready to strike out and smelter any who step in its path. If that's not enough to scare you, perhaps its five tiny fingers at the end of its short arms will. Like Australia's dropbear, the Pikachu has the capability to, in quite a cute manner, erratically claw at you. Luckily, we have sedated one today for the purpose of showing you its features up close. We found it gnawing on a powerline, and my team managed to catch it before a hoard of Poké-trainers rolled in. They are standing by now for its release. What you cannot see, photographed below, is the minute after this photograph was taken, wherein it blasted me to near death after its sedative wore off. You also cannot see its thunder-bolt shaped tail, which follows it swiftly wherever it goes. But what you can see is its tiny little ears, with a black tip on their ends. A mighty creature, so delicate in features. 

After releasing it, we headed back to our campsite behind the field where multiple Pikachu sightings have taken place. This may have to do with the multitude of lures that have been used by avid Poké-trainers. The group of humans observed earlier mumbled harsh nothings to one another. It looks as though they are having an argument. "I'll uninstall, you all better do the same because I don't think either of us will catch one unless we start over!" one screamed. The others seemed to have follow suit. According to our cameraman across the field, he heard them saying something about creating new email addresses and accounts to start this process, a process that has only recently been discovered. This process states that if you abandon all starter creatures over five times, a Pikachu will appear. The humans separated. We followed their ringleader, watching him leave behind several starter Pokémon.

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Surely enough, after abandoning Squirtle, Bulbasaur and Charmander five times, the human spotted the Pikachu we caught earlier. Unbeknownst to him, in a few minutes, this field will be teeming with them. But in order to allow him to retain his dignity, and to keep our camera crew safe, we chose not to notify him, and instead, watched him burn off all the calories months of Netflix binging have added to him. The human leapt up in delight with his mouth agape, and screamed, "I GOT HIM, I GOT HIM!"

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The humans he came with quickly gathered around him, trying to look at his phone screen. He held it up; a modern day Lion King, and shook. "Throw it!" some yelled. "Quick!" 

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The Pikachu, after having thought that its first encounter with these abhorrent humans would be its last, stared in horror as it began to count down its final minutes of freedom. It thought to flee, but it was programmed, once found in the game, to withstand the throwing of three Pokéballs before fleeing. Unable to turn itself away from the group of frighteningly excited humans, it turned towards it potential captor, and decided that the only thing left to do, since this was not a formal Pokémon battle, was fight off his Pokéballs.

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And surely enough, it did. The human threw the first Pokéball, and Pikachu swiftly tapped it away. "Shit!" he exclaimed. Another human said to it, "try again! Quick!" Pikachu almost had no time to evade the second, but did just in time. It frowned, and put itself in an attacking stance in order to try to intimidate the humans. But it was outnumbered, and more wannabe explorers joined its human rival, throwing bits and pieces of advice. One bit of advice stood out, "Use a Razz Berry!"

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The human complied. He threw a Razz Berry in front of Pikachu. Pikachu hesitated for a while, and then went for the bait. Just as he did, the human decided to throw the third and possibly his last Pokéball with a twist. He placed his finger on the screen, waved the Pokéball in a circular motion, and it leapt up in the augmented air. He threw a curveball. "GREAT" his phone flashed at him. 

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Pikachu panicked. His world turned a bright white and then a deep, velvety red. He was trapped inside the Pokéball. He strained. He wriggled. He punched its inner walls and screamed and even thunderbolts, it appears, could not help him. He cried out in surrender. One of my cameramen shed a few tears. This is a sad moment for all digitalised creatures. 

The Pikachu was then registered to the human's Pokédex. "Good work, bro!" "Well done!" "Awesome!" the humans cheered. As hastily as they were to find and capture a Pikachu, so too were they haste in leaving, and moving on to capture yet another. Pokémon all over the world now seem to be in danger of being ensnared in a Pokéball, forever indebted to a life of digital servitude towards humans who too are ensnared in the augmented reality joining the lives of Pokémon and humans alike. 

And in the mere flick of a finger, in a mere miss, in a mere additional flick, in a few mere pieces of advice and a mere  third try, Pikachu too seemed to be just a mere Pikachu to all present onlookers. The once elusive and highly desired Pokémon became just another Pokémon, and soon this game will be just another game. 


*not actually narrated nor transcribed from any narration by David Attenborough. This entire article is completely fictional and hypothetical. Read in the style of David Attenborough's voice to achieve full effect. 

What the F*ck? Melbournians are Fined for Public Swearing?

Oh? So a new law just came in today stating that if one swore in a public place, they would be fined $500? And people are now swearing at that law because it oppresses their sense of public freedom? 

Let me bring in a little anecdote of something that happens all too regularly on an ordinary trip to a local shopping centre - I witness teenagers in their little groups of 'cool,' using derogatory terms about homosexuals, filthy words to replace the act fornication, and even more horrid words against people of varied races and skin colours. I hear older boys swearing around younger children, deteriorating one of their aspects of innocence by the simple act of cussing. I hear the not-so-classy people wearing torn pants and a stained singlet walking around swearing at kiosks for not letting them purchase a drink which costs five cents more than they can afford.

I still remember the first time I heard the word 'f*ck'. I was in the courtyard at my primary school, in a brick-cylinder, playing with a tennis ball, slamming it against the wall and talking to my friends about our latest Pok'emon catches. All of the sudden, the 'cool' boy in year six and his gang of followers walked in. They all gathered around him as my friends and I took a step back, and we, not knowing about the greatest spectacle that was to come from this boy's mouth, eavesdropped at the very moment he said it, and we all gasped. He gave a 'cool' smile and then walked out of the brick cylinder. We just stood there, unable to accept what had just happened. Did we just hear that? Did he really just say that? Yes, yes he did. I know that from that moment, at the age of just nine, an aspect of my innocence was taken from me.

I know that things are far different now than they were in the year 2001. I know that a lot of children nine and under have access to the internet and are exposed to things that they were never meant to know until they had neared the middle of puberty, and I know that some of these kids even use those words themselves because they hear it all too often in their households. Nevertheless, if the government imposes such a fine upon filthy public vocabulary, then the hearing of these terms would be sprawled around our public sphere less, and it will slowly but surely turn into a social norm that words such as 'f*ck' and 'c*nt' are not acceptable to use in sentences to describe things in negative or positive ways, nor are they acceptable to replace words like those that describe the act of fornication, those that come before a feeling to emphasise the feeling of that feeling, nor to replace 'heck' in exclamations like 'what the heck!'

I believe that swear words have their places, such as if one was speaking to their peers in a private room in the library about an assignment that they loathe, or if someone is in a lot of traffic on their way to a meeting that had started without them thirty minutes ago, but I do not believe that it should be used around the general public where innocent ears lurk, nor towards authoritative figures like police officers when the user of those words has clearly committed an offence: police are people too, they are just far more caring about the safety of others to ignore that man who is running off with a new television from Harvey Norman, or to ignore that drunk indecent man flashing his private parts to a group of year 7 girls exiting from their highschool and taking the shortcut home through an alleyway around the corner, or that crazy woman who pressed her lit cigarette onto a young man's forearm and as he came to hit her began yelling about how he is sexually assaulting her. There are far too many problems occurring in the world for us to just stop and complain about the stripping of our freedom because of the taking away of our indecency to use words of vulgarity around others in public.

I mean, think about it, really - do you really need words of profanity in your everyday discourse? Recently, I have excluded most of my vulgar language use in my conversations due to the fact that I now work with adolescents and children, and I have found myself using varied adjectives rather than that monotonous 'f*ck' word. I have found that my sense of description is far more expansive, and that instead of saying "what the f*ck?!", "why did that just happen, I don't quite feel comfortable about how that person responded to that and I particularly don't enjoy how that saucepan had almost his me right in the head had I not ducked in time!" works far more better. It states what happened, and it states my opinion about what happened, so that a three-dimensional form of reasoning emanates from my mouth, rather than an unpretentious, overrated word.

Challenge yourself, before a $500 fine does. The world is much more three-dimensional with artistic conversation. Try to use descriptive words rather than the bland words Samuel L. Jackson uses in his film Snakes on a Plane. I mean, he says the word "motherf*cker" so much that the viewer forgets the movie is about snakes on a plane rather than a mother who keeps on fornicating. Language is beautiful, do not kill it with profanity.