The Internet is flooded with stories of people hunting down the 1990s icon on their office desks, in hospital rooms, and even in bathrooms.
One teenage girl even found a dead body while looking for Pokémon. And police in Missouri claimed that four suspected robbers lured in victims with the possibility of Pokémon.
But now the new Pokémon Go is really getting serious – more people want to play it than forge intimate connections with their fellow human beings.
According to Similar Web, after just one day the free augmented virtual-reality game had been downloaded in the US more times than Tinder on Android phones.
As of day five, Pokémon Go had been downloaded on five per cent of all Android phones, with Tinder at just two per cent.
The game isn’t just preventing new relationships from forming; it might just be ruining existing ones, if you believe BuzzFeed, that is.
Here’s just one sample from its ’29 Relationships Already Ruined By Pokémon Go’ list: “My boyfriend said ‘catch ‘em all’ instead of ‘I love you’ when he dropped me off at work this morning…”.
It’s so popular that it’s on the verge of overtaking Twitter in terms of daily active users on Android.
The craze is already so rampant in Australia that in the first few hours of its release players reported being unable to log on to the reality smartphone game, due to high demand.
When attempting to, they’re presented with a screen reading: “Our servers are experiencing issues. Please come back later.”
So how does it work?
In simple terms, Pokémon Go uses your phone’s GPS and clock to detect where and when you are in the game and make Pokémon “appear” around you (on your phone screen) so you can go and catch them.
As you move around, different and more types of Pokémon will appear depending on where you are and what time it is.
And if you want to learn how to make delicious Candy Pokemon Pokeballs, click below.
