When I was in college, I lived in a fraternity house. At the top of the stairs of our house was a second-floor landing, where five or six of my fraternity brothers and assorted girlfriends and relatives gathered to spend most of "the best years of their lives" playing a game called "Dungeons and Dragons."
Now, to be honest, I don't know any of the rules of "Dungeons and Dragons." I'm shooting from the hip here, but I'm thinking it involved dungeons and dragons. I could also gather that it involved a lot of time and a set of rules more complex than the statistics class work I wasn't studying. Statistics: It's where business degrees go to die. But I digress.
Anyway, I thought "Dungeons and Dragons" looked like a complete waste and I used to virtually snort my derision at the players and their goofy, time-eating, "in a land far away dwelt there dragons and sorcerers and such" game. Typically, I would do this while I was stepping over them on my way to the basement, where I would spend the entire evening and much of the early morning shooting pool instead of, oh, I don't know... studying Statistics. So, perhaps the death of my business degree was something of a self-inflicted wound.
Strangely enough we all managed to graduate in roughly (in some cases, very roughly) four years and go our merry ways. I don't think any of those guys turned into professional Dungeons and Dragons players (if there even is such a thing) and I'm nobody's pool shark, so, it's pretty obvious we were all wasting a lot of time and just happened to pick our respective poison.
I thought of that the other day when I drove by the Bentonville Square and saw a group of people wandering around, waving their phones in the air like they were signaling overhead aircraft or like they were in Razorback Stadium trying to get service. I found out later that they were actually playing Pokemon Go.
For the uninitiated (which still pretty much includes me), Pokemon Go is game you play with an app installed on your phone. Apparently you use your phone's camera to scan the area around various sites in the hopes of seeing creatures that you capture to score points. Since there are about 700 of these, the game and the fun never seem to end. Which explains (sort of) why normally sane people would be out in 90-degree heat waving their phones in the air looking for things that aren't really there.
I've got to be honest: There have been lots of times when I have wandered around seeing things that really weren't there. But, again, that was college.
Pokemon Go is hot. In fact, it has surpassed Tinder as the most-used app (is now the appropriate time to discuss our priorities as a nation and a world? Maybe later ...), and it's been around a little more than a week.
Of course, the Lovely Mrs. Smith and I play a version of Pokemon Go. In ours, instead of using our phones to find fantastic creatures, we wander around our house trying to find our phones. And the car keys. And the dog, which we suddenly remember we already let outside. No points are scored, but we do get to leave the garage, so, we claim victory in our own way.
As with most popular things, Pokemon Go has generated its share of distractions. Apparently, of course, there are general concerns about people wandering around, paying little attention to their surroundings or compatriots while staring at their phones. To those who voice those objections, I say, so, how was life in the mine shaft you've obviously been living in for the last 10 years?
There are, also, concerns about the appropriateness of some of the Pokemon "locations." I mean, yeah, I'm big on ignoring sacred cows, but even I would rather not have folks strolling through Arlington National Cemetery or the Holocaust Museum looking for little imaginary creatures.
Then there are reports of people doing harm to themselves or others by wandering out into roads (A hint here: I'm going to bet no game developer in his right mind located a small creature in the middle of a street at rush hour). We've even heard of people being lured to out-of-the-way locations and mugged (because criminality follows enterprise at blinding speed).
Still, I'm having a hard time generating a lot of outrage here. I mean, at least the game is getting people out of the house (OK, not to Arlington, if you please, but out). And they are probably being drawn to parts of their cities and towns they may not have visited on their own. We're going to say that's a good thing. Depends on the "part of town."
And if none of that matters, well, I'm going to go with this: We've all got that time-wasting thing we do that hurts productivity, keeps us a little bit sane and that we can't defend. One of those "Dungeons and Dragons" guys went on to be a surgeon. Now, I can only imagine the pressure he was under. Back in college, he was just in the way to the pool hall.
So, you go, you Pokemon Go guys. Find all those little creatures you can. Me, I'll just watch with bemusement. And then, maybe, I'll go rack 'um up again for old time's sake.
Commentary on 07/15/2016