In a world where innocents are mowed down while dancing, and black fathers and sons are senselessly murdered by peace officers, and peace officers are senselessly murdered by military veterans, and voters roiling with toxic resentments threaten to put a hollow shell of a human in charge of the most powerful nation on Earth — well, in that world, sometimes the only thing that makes sense is to wander the streets for hours in search of imaginary cartoon animals.
At least, that’s why I began playing Pokémon Go with my son Dash last week: to escape the oppressive burden of reality by diving into the sanctuary of my cell-phone screen and hunting harmless pixel beasties. Plus, Dash told me one of the goals of Pokémon is to help your characters “evolve” — which sounds so civilized and promising.
The summer’s hit smartphone game was downloaded more times in its first week than any other app in history and already has more users than Twitter. The game essentially deposits Pokémon characters throughout the real world. When you get near them, the creatures show up on your phone and you “capture” them by swiping your finger across the screen to fire balls at them.