TOD - Here, with his permission, is what my son wrote last week on Facebook about the current craze:
"As a millennial who didn't own a Game Boy in the '90s and doesn't own a smartphone now, I've felt a certain amount of schadenfreude this week, watching the chaos swirl around Pokemon Go: a dead body discovered, people targeted for mugging, traffic accidents, Koffing appearing in the Holocaust Museum, Westboro not-Baptist not-Church being designated as a gym and their attempts to co-opt Jigglypuff for counter-propaganda, and many more. This is engrossing, even for me as an observer, because it hits two of our generation's nostalgia buttons. Pokemon nostalgia is obvious enough, but also virtual/augmented reality nostalgia mixed with wish fulfillment: all through the '90s, VR/AR was perpetually a few years away and heavily hyped (finally reaching its apotheosis with The Matrix), but computer hardware wasn't up to the task yet. Now, it is. I don't begrudge anyone playing, since we really need some light-hearted, nostalgic relief from the violence, hate, political sclerosis, and economic dysfunction. Be safe, be respectful, catch 'em all, and come back to reality inspired to create real solutions to real problems."
I love, love, love the last sentence, which he predicted when he wrote it.
