Pokémon, mobile phones and hype resistance

My latest blog post I'm dying to play Pokémon Go mostly got responses from fellow bloggers that said they did not grow up with pokémon and hence didn't understand what all the fuss is about. (I decided to take this as a compliment: I'm obviously young in spirit.) Bhagpuss even wrote a post in response entitled Why I'm Not Playing Pokémon Go (Like I Have To Have A Reason). Spoiler: it's because he doesn't own a phone. To keep up the tradition I'll now reply to him with another post about hypes and, err, phones. (I know, it's not exactly MMOs, but it'll have to do.) This is a lengthy one, so you're warned.

The pokémon hype

Bhagpuss associates pokémon with childhood hypes such as furbies and tamagotchis, which he got familiar with through his children. Me, I missed that there was a pokémon hype to begin with. Sure, the anime was broadcasted, but I thought it was dumb (sorry Ash lovers). I disliked some of the pokémon because they were meant to be overly cute or were tasteless ripoffs of existing animals (jigglypuff, milktank, I'm looking at you). Others I did like (pikachu and bulbasaur), but I couldn't care less about what they did in the story. I am a terrible pokéfan.

But then the games. The pokémon games for the Gameboy are simple yet - in my opinion - timeless. A great game stays a great game, even if it's graphics get heavily outdated. Playing those 20 year old pokémon games is still my one of my favourite indoor holiday occupations. Yet, contrary to furbies and tamagotchis, nobody at school was talking about pokémon. My gender and age may partly have been at fault here, but it simply never occurred to me to talk with my friends about the games. What supposedly was a hype for me simply meant having immense fun losing myself in the world of pokémon together with my brother.

But I was going to talk about phones. Near the end his post, Bhagpuss declares (spoiler alert): 

"I probably would be playing Pokémon Go along with everyone else right now, just to be part of the buzz, if it wasn't for one other thing: I don't own a mobile phone. Not just not a smart one (...), I don't even own a dumb one."

I feel for him: if you don't own a mobile phone in today's world you're regarded as somewhat of an oddity. I know, because I spent the majority of my student years (which are still ongoing) without one myself. Instead, I called with this:

Proof that it's dangerous to gift me something hideous for my birthday:
I may end up actually using it!

The following conversation took place at least several times a month:

"Could I have your phone number please?"

"020..."

"Your mobile phone number, please." 

"I don't have one."

This is where The Stare of Unbelief would make an entrance. Followed by the unavoidable Thoughts of How Do I Deal With This Odd Entity. From this moment onwards, the conversation could go various ways, but usually followed the same patterns.

I couldn't participate in some services just because a mobile phone number was required. Sometimes, people were nearly offended when they find out you have no mobile phone. "But what if you're going somewhere and you're late?" "Err, well, just like before we had mobile phones: they assume I missed the train and wait 15 minutes?"

Mobile phone gripes

I have to admit that there are some things I'm not fond of when it comes to mobile phones. For instance, people calling in public transport ("I'm now in the bus. I'll be home in 10.") drive me crazy. The constant updating of where you are just seems unnecessary and stressful to me. Yet somehow I don't see people doing this as often as I used to. So either people have adjusted their way of handling their phone, or I'm just not registering it anymore because I'm so used to it by now.

I guess this slight distrust to mobile phones originates from back when they broke through, in the early 2000's or so. I remember it well, I was 14 and all of a sudden half of my class got a mobile phone from their parents. Literally half of my class: all the girls did, almost none of the boys did (this, of course, changed in later years when phones got more affordable). The reason, although nobody spoke this aloud, was that parents were afraid that their girls would run into creepy people (aka get raped). I thought this was ridiculous. What would you do? In the process of being raped: "one moment, I need to call my mum"? I always thought that, if rapists were your worry, the expensive phone money would've been better spent on a martial arts course for your daughter. When I talked about this to my female class mates, they'd respond with "but it's really handy when you have a flat tier!" - most of us went to school by bicycle. This was true. But what about the boys, then? They just had to walk when they got a flat tier? That hardly seemed fair. In reality, the mobile phones were mostly used by my female classmates to call to their mums when they arrived at their friends' places. Mums that would freak out if they forgot to do so. Instead of an increase in safety, I felt surrounded by control freaks. And thus I associated mobile phones with the image of young women as volatile beings to be protected rather than young women that could take care of themselves. As I rather put myself in the latter group, I insisted I did not want a phone.

No, mobile phones and 14 YO stubborn and over-thinking me did not get off to a good start.

But the way we use mobile phones changed, and people do, too. When I exchanged our village for the big city to study at the university, I bought a 20 euro mobile phone to keep in contact. When it eventually broke down, I decided not to get a new one: by now I also had a wired phone. (Although in hindsight my boyfriend at that time's obsession with keeping track of where I was may have had something to do with it as well. He could not expect me to message him all the time if I had no phone.)

In my mobile-free student years, not having a mobile phone was automatically perceived as a conscious choice deviating from the norm and most people assumed I was "anti-phone". In reality I now felt neutral about them: people constantly updating their whereabouts still make me roll my eyes, but you can also chose not to do so. I simply thought of phones as convenience objects that I could do without.

If you haven't guessed by now, I regard myself as - and now we've come to the topic in the title - 'hype resistant'. The mere fact whether a majority of people has or does something does not affect my choice to do so as well; its personal appeal to me does. This goes both ways. In recent years, nerdy fandoms (e.g. Star Trek, Star Wars) have suddenly become popular, borderline mainstream. It feels surreal! But this does not mean I now all of a sudden detest Star Trek and Star Wars - that would be silly. (In fact, I'm totally abusing the hypes to buy all the things.) So when the hype train decides an augmented reality version of my favourite Gameboy game is hot, by all means, count me in. Even if that means I'll have to buy a smartphone to play it.