Editor's Note: Although a lot of the focus of this blog entry is the deleting of the Pokemon Go app, Snooze Button Generation founder and CEO Joe Stevens reinstalled it about two weeks later. Say what? He says he was walking much less without the app, and he "claims" he can handle Pokemon Go without it overwhelming his life.
Try as I might, but this Gen Xer just can't stay addicted to his phone — like the Gen Z kids. At the end of the day, maybe we more seasoned folks aren't meant to be on our phones so much. Oh well.
Last week, I took a major step in curbing my phone use by deleting Pokemon Go. I went on a field trip to spa-like Cal State Fullerton, tried to do a Pokemon party with a student and then realized he was playing the game the whole time and even walked into somebody.
Wait a second. Is this what I look like when I'm mindlessly spinning Pokestops and collecting constant Pokemon? Ugh. I don't want that.
I deleted the app, and my life almost instantly got better. The curious thing is that I just wrote about my Pokemon addiction two months ago. Perhaps that blog entry made me realize how silly it was. While it's great to walk 30 miles a week, do I really need to be on my phone during those miles? And do I really have to walk 30 miles every single week?
This whole Pokemon Go addiction, just to be abruptly deleted, has me pondering how pop culture has gotten so ephemeral that I need to reevaluate where I spend my time. Also, I am wondering if our attention-economy pop culture world now is destined to be utterly uncool because of its tech-enforced, engagement-calculating parameters.
Surprisingly, I find my time — and attention — valuable, and I just don't want to waste it on mindless scrolling or the completely unnecessary 24-hour news cycle or Podcasts (I much prefer music). Yes, I will indeed live the majority of my life away from tech and pop culture, but then what do I do when I want to dabble in a movie or TV show or music or whatnot? I'm not deleting all of pop culture from my life, like Pokemon Go.
This blog functions as not only a record of my life, but a record of pop culture for Gen Xers in my demographic. A topic needs to grab my full attention for me to write about it, and I've noticed some things that have grabbed my attention have come and gone, like the wind, Bullseye. They're gone now. Poof.
The Podcast SmartLess and Costco jump to mind. Against my better judgement, I lauded SmartLess two years ago, but I had already seen that the Podcast's utter focus was commercialism. Then, it became even more commercial, and even more commercial, and I haven't had a desire to listen for a long, long time.
Last year, I wrote about how I finally succumbed to joining Costco. That membership lasted a year. Hey Costco, I'm good; your novelty wore off. Plus, my family prefers its big-box items from Target, so OK then.
As I ponder my reversals on Pokemon, SmartLess and Costco, I guess it all goes back to the first Noble Truth of Buddhism. Nothing is forever, and this is painful.
While I am not sure the Buddha envisioned that truth applied to Pokemon Go, I believe that truth is important to remember as the world often appears to be changing with warp-like speed. But is it really?
I'd like to think people are the same as 30 years ago. But perhaps modern technology, like comments on YouTube videos, brings out the worst in people. Perhaps modern technology pushed individuals into being way less cooler versions of their ultimate selves.
Media-wise, if we're living in this winner-take-all, attention economy, then it's exceptionally hard for anything to be cool in that space. I mean, really. Once anything goes viral, isn't it passe by then? If the masses determine what gets attention, isn't that completely uncool and unworthy of our attention?
It's kind of like when the frat boys started to like Pearl Jam, and we just knew, OK, Pearl Jam just isn't worth our attention any more. But now, it's not just the frat boys, who happened to be in college by the way, adding the likes to Pearl Jam. It's everybody. I mean everybody.
And it doesn't matter how uneducated, or clueless, one is. Your phone attention counts as one engagement as does the engagement of The World's Most Sophisticated Man. But, wait, isn't it highly likely that more uneducated folk are on their phones longer than the smart ones? Of course. Ahh, no wonder the world looks like it does!
It reminds of a George Carlin joke: Think of how dumb the average American is. Then, understand that half of the country is dumber than that!
And now, these people, who do not have the capacity to read full-length books, have slot-machine supercomputers in their pockets. Buzzes, beeps, memes, a red circle with a number in it, zero regulation — how could society not denigrate?
But, alas, I'll still hit up pop culture to escape that ugly truth, and where I put my attention is crucial. While White Lotus and my glorious Cleveland Guardians appear absolutely worthy of it, I have to be pretty discerning with my attention.
John Mulaney, for example, had a killer show about L.A. about 10 months ago, and now it's no longer about L.A. and is about nothing in particular. Totally uncool now — but at least the show's opening sequence remained.
One glorious Saturday afternoon in November 2013, I stumbled across a Lord of the Rings pinball machine for sale at Cal Bowl in Lakewood. I snagged the thing and tuned it up to perfection. It might remain my most prized possession.
Ten years later in November 2023, Chloe randomly was playing Pokemon Go. I was curious what she was doing and announced, "Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
Every since Space Invaders entered my life in 1980, video games have been a part of it. Soon, it was Mario Bros. and Tecmo Super Bowl on Nintendo, and now, this Pokemon Go thing, I must admit, is a full-on addiction. I think it's a healthy addiction, but I'm not 100 percent sure.
I just won't stop playing. Most weeks, I walk more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) to get rewards from the app.
For those who know the game, you will not need this brief explanation. Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game that was globally popular as soon as it came out in 2016. Augmented reality means that it combines real world and computer-generated content.
So I'll be walking down the street and see a mural in real life, but then that mural will exist on my phone as a Pokestop to spin (click on), collect as a postcard and get rewards. That's pretty cool. I've collected more than 12,000 of those. ... Whoa. I've saved 650 of them.
And then there's the characters, the Pokemon. There are more than 1,000 of those. They're cute and collectable, kind of like virtual Beanie Babies. I've snagged more than 14,000 Pokemon. ... Egads.
When I'm pretending this isn't an addiction, I liken it to the best Fitbit ever because it rewards me for walking. Good deal!
Walking in different places is my favorite thing about it. Without that, I wouldn't do it. Chloe recently had me download the new Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket, a virtual card game. It doesn't work at all for me. It has nothing to do with walking. I'm not a fan of non-physical video games. Pinball and Pokemon Go at least involve some sort of physical element.
For a lot of 2024, my singular focus in life was to evolve the Pokemon legendary character Zygarde to its fullest form. That meant I had to walk path upon path to collect 250 Zygarde cells. You can only get three Zygarde cells per day, and it's erratic how many one gets for a path. Sometimes, it's zero. And sometimes, I just didn't see them. Getting those cells took forever.
Finally, this past November 2024, I fully evolved Zygarde, and that's the picture of him above. After that mega-accomplishment, I figured the game was over. But then, I just kept playing. I still collected Zygarde cells (I'm not sure why), then I figured out how to use Reddit to find raids and collect legendary Pokemon. What was happening here?
Dude, it is a full-on ADDICTION. Pokemon characters are ranked on a scale of zero to three stars, and typically, there are three versions of each Pokemon like baby, teen and adult. I pretty much have three stars of every Pokemon in every version. Wild!
And I have my Pokemon into teams. I have nine different teams of 18 Pokemon on each. That's 162 specialized Pokemon for my criteria. My most important category "best buddies" just grew to 20. You get a best buddy when you earn 300 hearts with the Pokemon you choose as your sidekick, and getting one best buddy is a pretty lengthy process.
Look, enough already. This all is craziness. It's obsessive video gaming. It's one thing to use Pokemon Go as motivation to walk, but then, why am I putting hours upon hours into the game at home without walking? Where is the justification for that?
I see the mindless phone consumption of my students, and by George, I don't want to be like them. I want to be mindful, and I don't need to devote my life to Pokemon Go. I'm better than that!
In this blog, I've often written about and recommended books that questions social media, the phone and our current attention economy. Reader, Come Home and How to Do Nothingare my favorites. Right now, I just finished a book in a similar vein, Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi.
I couldn't agree more with the premise of Bored and Brilliant, that to be more creative, we have to embrace boredom and not give away all of our break moments to screen time. Our brains need time for space, and nowadays, so many people don't give themselves a break away from their phones. For me, I actually am excellent with phone discipline — except for this Pokemon Go thing.
In Bored and Brilliant, Zomorodi suggests deleting the app that we use most and see what happens. She quotes author and tech behavior expert Nir Eyal, who says we should ask this question: "Is this product serving me or hurting me?"
I've had social media off my phone for years and am disciplined enough to look at the news (DW from Germany is what I prefer) only once a day. But the reality is that the kid's game, Pokemon Go, probably isn't serving me any more. Yet I'm confused because it often gets me out to walk. And that's a good thing.
I am thinking of deleting the app, but I just don't know I can do it.
We parents have a lot of guilt — or at least I do. I am so sorry for addicting my youngest daughter, Chloe, to caffeine. My bad!
It began in 2020 when she was doing online eighth-grade school. She, Dina and I would walk to Ding Tea in the afternoon, and she and Dina would get tea drinks. I'd do the walk, then come home and have an espresso.
Sophie's online school went longer than my and Chloe's school day, so she didn't often walk with us and partake. Then, a bit of irony hit, when Sophie got a job at Ding Tea the summer before senior year in high school.
Through this caffeine addiction, we all have bonded, and Chloe's junior year in high school — on some level — was "The Year of Coffee Shops."
Chloe and I went to 27 different coffee shops, and without talking about it much, she made a critic's spreadsheet of these shops. She critiqued atmosphere, quality of coffee, vibe and a few other things. Eventually, a couple shops, especially Homeboy Coffee in Artesia and Wood Coffee Co on 10th in Long Beach emerged as our favorites (We actually went to Wood with Dina and Sophie as well yesterday). We went to many places multiple times, but in the back of our minds, we kept searching for new shops — new vibes.
All the while, Chloe diligently did her school work as she swashbuckled through five AP classes with her badminton journey, advanced orchestra, K-Pop club and friends also a part of life. So she'd work her butt off at these coffee shops, and I did a little and then tried to make it look like I was working as I collected Pokemon Go characters.
Anyway, Chloe finally ended junior year two weeks after me and a month after Sophie finished Year 1 at Berkeley. Then, during that schools-out weekend, we hit up three coffee shops new to us on three consecutive days. But that wasn't our plan. Our plan was to visit the Watts Towers as a Father's Day outing, and on the way, we ate in Paramount and stopped at Patria Coffee Roasters in Compton.
There is something to be said about driving in Los Angeles on surface streets and not the freeways — when feasible. You get more of a feel of neighborhoods, and I realized that my ideas of certain neighborhoods were off. Next to Patria, for example, a park called Wilson Park stands in all its glory, where there were so many kids on bikes that it resembles a unique version of CicLAvia.
After Patria, we realized it would behoove us to get out of our immediate Long Beach/Cypress area and explore some new neighborhoods. So the next day, we went to Ced Coffee & Donut in Little Saigon Koreatown in Westminister. Incredible drinks!
The day after that, we returned to Little Saigon at Trung Nguyen Legend. Totally worth checking out.
So with Chloe's junior year being "The Year of Coffee Shops," it was interesting/surprising how we took it to the next level once she got out of junior year alive. I thought we might be done. OK, phew, maybe it was time to kick back, maybe go to the beach or something. Nope! We did more coffee shops elsewhere.
When you go to so many coffee shops, you learn how to better use Yelp and the Interwebs and not even try for mid coffee shop. Only the best for us! We also are so comfortable in the context of however they do whatever they do wherever we. Honestly, there's not much range for how people do things.
I must say one of my favorite experiences was in February, when both Chloe and I were feeling guilty for going to so many coffee shops and questioning our caffeine addictions. Somehow, through a lengthy, roundabout conversation, we somehow got affogatos at Aroma Di Roma in Belmont Shore that day. Fuhgeddaboudit!
That started a wild, two-week stint in which I believed there was NOTHING GREATER IN THE WORLD THAN THE AFFOGATO. Eh, the writing was probably on the wall then — Chloe and I might want to cut down our caffeine.
Well, that will have to wait, I suppose. She turns 17 tomorrow, and we don't want caffeine-withdrawal headaches on that big day. Happy birthday, Chloe. Let's get some affogatos.
