I dislike talking about the same thing as everyone else, but… it’s impossible to ignore.

The best thing I can say about Pokémon Go is that it is a case study in accidental viral marketing. Or would it be grassroots social media marketing? I only know my beach vacation went from zero to “pull into that parking lot, honey” within hours on Thursday.

Both Google search trends and Nintendo’s stock prices bear that suddenness out:

And that’s just the generic “Pokemon” term.

By the way, $1000 on Nintendo last Wednesday is $1571 as of Monday night.

The aforementioned request for a detour was from someone who had no interest whatsoever in videogames, and by all indications still has no interest today. But I am absolutely certain that when she is out and about in town this week, she will be taking the “scenic” route through the red zones in order to get some more PokéBalls.

Choose wisely.

The other thing I’ll say about Pokémon Go is that its fascinating witnessing a perfect storm in motion. This isn’t the first Augmented Reality game to come out – Niantic were the ones to release Ingress, whose bones make up the entirety of Pokémon Go. No, this is what it must have felt like back in 2004, when WoW came onto the scene and blew up. Popularity basically beyond all reason.

And that is essentially where I am: watching this “game” be popular beyond all reason. It is impossible to “play” in every context in which I would play any game, it drains battery like nothing else, it gets full access to your Google account, and it’d waste my time even if I had never downloaded it in the first place (i.e. by the detour requests). I get that it’s nice fun for the whole family, blah blah, people actually moving around outside, etc.

Know what I see? A whole lot of more oblivious people walking around staring at their phones.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to clear my plate.