Hello everyone! I hope you had a fantastic week and also for most of you TGIF! 

I have to take a moment to talk about this new fad that people are going insane over and that would be; Pokemon Go!

To start off I never collected the cards as a child, but I was into Pokemon Snap on the Nintendo 64 and I was absolutely hooked when the Pokemon games (especially Pokemon Silver and Pokemon Black) came out on the Nintendo DS in the early 2000’s.

I heard about Pokemon Go from my boyfriend, who heard about it from one of his friends. Once it hit Facebook it became huge. National news have called it “bigger than Facebook and Twitter”. 

I personally love the game it’s so much fun and guess what!? I’m actually losing weight and socializing while playing it. Unfortunately there are people out there who love to put other people down no matter what they do or what their interests are. Here are two stereotypes I keep hearing that I’m here to clarify for you right now. 

1. If you play Pokemon you are unemployed and have no life: First off this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Not only am I employed, but I am a full-time college student. Chad, my boyfriend, works his butt off Monday through Friday having shifts that range from 8-12 hours. Football players are even loving this game right now! The other day we were walking around downtown along with a very large crowd of Pokemon players, and a man sitting at a bench says, “are you all playing Pokemon..get a job.” Of course my very outspoken mate of soul replies, “It’s 9:30 at night. What are you doing?” Of course having no comeback for that he says, “well at least you’re getting exercise.” People have hobbies outside of work. If you don’t I will assume you are an extremely stressed person.

2. Our world is falling apart and everyone is going around collecting Pokemon: Today I saw a meme going around Facebook with a starving child from Africa that explained people are more worried about Pokemon than starving children. Really? When was the last time you donated to these poor children. Just because we enjoy going out and playing a game doesn’t mean we don’t care about what’s going on in the world. Honestly if something that is healthy brings you joy than partake in it it considering watching the news is nothing but depressing lately.

Here are, in my opinion, the three greatest things about Pokemon Go: 

1. Socialization: I am an unsocial person that is going out into my community and other communities meeting people from different ethnicities and age groups. I’m interacting and having conversations with all types of people and we are coming together as a community instead of sitting in our houses talking to each other through our phones.


2. Exercise: I have lost more weight consistently in the past few weeks than I have in a year. Not many people like exercise and I’m one of them. It takes a lot of incentive to get me to want to work out. Pokemon Go makes exercising fun. Another perk? They have fixed the game making it very hard to use your car to play. For example, if your speed is more than 15 mph it won’t count toward the km you have to walk to hatch an egg. You also can’t hit pokestops because you have to be right up at the stop in order to collect things and while driving you pass it too quick and are out of range of the stop within seconds. 

3. Little to no violence: I suppose you could say battling your Pokemon is violent, but look at all these video games out there such as Call of Duty and Gears of War where you actually take a gun and shoot people for points. In Pokemon Go your very fictional characters use special attacks to battle and then pass out waiting to be healed. There is no death or guns involved in this game. 

So there you have it. There is no harm in going out and having some fun. I’m not leaving my house to drink until I throw up, or go do drugs. I’m leaving my house to catch Pokemon. Big deal. It’s healthy and there are multiple benefits! There will always be people that make things look bad, such as the man who tagged his team name, but many players were disgusted at that act saying that it makes us all look bad. It’s just about going out, meeting new people, getting some exercise, and having fun. I’m pretty sure I can hold a job down at the same time. 😉

Happy blogging!