Donald Clarke: Pokémon Go has been and gone

Argh! Where the hell did Pokémon Go come from? That happened faster than Theresa May’s propulsion into Downing Street.

There was a time when crazes set in at a leisurely pace. It took about five years for punk to transform itself from revolution to something that got parodied on The Dick Emery Show.

There are old men at Glastonbury who haven’t yet accepted hip hop as something other than a passing fad.

A long, long time ago, in the days when Andrea Leadsom still seemed viable – I believe it was last Monday – only hard-core games fans had heard of Nintendo’s latest mobile application.

Three days later a “lighter side” report on the BBC noted that a Pikachu had been spotted waiting outside Number 10 for the new prime minister. This didn’t happen to Harold Macmillan.

The inventor of the hula hoop did not, the day after perfecting his plaything, open the New York Times to see the future earl of Stockton snaking hips within its contours.

I don’t know what the reporter was up to. By then the Guardian had already assembled some urban myths: a girl had found a body while playing; a woman discovered her boyfriend’s infidelity during a session.

Comic Vine wondered if the game was overrated. If you thought Pokémon Go a groundbreaking phenomenon then IndieWire was here to tell you that it was “not a groundbreaking phenomenon”.

No wonder the old gits at the BBC were getting on board.

Before Will Self had time to describe it as a “sontentical anti-orgastitration” Pokémon Go had already become the most decrepit of hats. It had, indeed, become the sort of thing people write columns about in The Irish Times.

“Yesterday, while running my fingers through the matted behind of a damp foal, I mourned the young cubs lost to the distraction of electronic Babylon.” And so on.

All this happened before the smartphone game was even available in these territories.

The party burned itself out while we had our noses pressed to the other side of the window.

Pokémon Go was released in the US and Australia during the Pleistocene era we call July 6th. Nintendo’s stock surged 10 per cent.

By last Tuesday daily usage of the game on Android exceeded that of Snapchat, Tinder, Instagram and Facebook.

Then we all began to get sick of it. Oh, I remember Tuesday as if it were only a few days ago.

Is there any point explaining what the thing does? Might I better spend my time talking you through medieval cup-and-ball games? Oh, why not.

Depressingly, there are people approaching 30 who “grew up” on the original Game Boy incarnations of the Pocket Monsters. (Get it?)

Emerging in 1996, the first role-playing games asked the player to capture surreal beasts and pit them against one another.

Only the Super Mario franchise has sold more units. Pokémon spread across platforms and inspired a series of films whose weirdness almost compensated for their impenetrable plots.

Mainstream attention

Pokémon Go sees the series secure mainstream attention for the first time in a decade. A startling innovation allows the “trainer”, while playing the game on his or her phone, to locate Pokémon in the real world.

So, as you’re strolling about the city, you view the universe through the camera and keep eyes peeled for yellow, many-eared things lurking behind fire hydrants.

One striking image showed dozens of visitors to Central Park shrieking with laughter and horror at stuff that wasn’t really there. (This has been going on in Central Park since the 1960s, but the current hallucinations invite less attention from the narc squad.)

Less happy reports described players placing virtual Pokémon in Arlington cemetery and the US Holocaust museum.

Pokémon Go had its first “ban this sick craze” moment.

Consider the way many humans now observe the world and you will get some sense how powerful such an effect can be.

Fully grown people view entire holidays through the screen of their smartphone.

The mediated image has become as “real” as the unmediated image, and thus the arrival of any otherworldly bodies registers like a genuine alien invasion.

That’s right. Like all things the Daily Mail suggests will turn our offspring into Children of the Damned, Pokémon Go sounds completely awesome and worth acquiring immediately.

Did you not hear? The monsters are in your actual garden.

As I have explained, Pokémon Go has already passed its peak and has become last week’s phenomenon.

The good news here is that this means it’s due a revival. It’s time to get nostalgic for early July.

You remember what that was like. Boris Johnson’s career was over, France were set to win the European Championships and the air smelt of Pokémon Go. Ahh!