When Pokémon Go came along, I have to admit I was impressed by its impact on society. I never touched it, but seeing so many people going outside and exploring the world to find new Pokémon brought joy to my heart. I think I was fortunate to grow up in a time where the Internet was just awesome enough to suck up your nights, but just slow and underdeveloped enough to not distract you from going outside and playing during the day. Now the Internet has infested every aspect of our and especially young people’s lives, and this new app makes me feel the most “boomer” I’ve ever felt. Ladies and gentlemen, may I please introduce an upcoming app slated for a late July release, Pokémon Sleep.
As in a literal Pokémon app… for sleeping. You sleep. It tracks it. You unlock new… sleeping positions for Pokémon? Who the hell wants this? I personally struggle with sleep. I’m either hibernating for 12 hours plus at a time or scraping by on six hours or less. My sleep schedule ruins way too many of my days. But I would never in a million years think “well perhaps Pokémon Sleep could help me”. These days apps are trying to gamify just about everything from toothbrushing to daily chores. Now I love regular gaming as much as the next person, but needing my phone to entice me with “leveling up my gamer teeth” by completing brushing challenges feels pretty dystopian to me. It goes without saying that Pokémon Sleep gives me that same ick of some corporation developing an app that’s gonna absorb way too much personal data for the tradeoff of… reminding you to sleep? How the hell am I gonna unlock other sleeping positions anyway? Anytime I try to, I always end up resorting back to my default side position so that I can stop being uncomfortable and actually sleep that night. I could see this perhaps pushing a few kids to fall into a proper sleep schedule for school so they can get a rare Snorlax. Otherwise trying to tie the franchise to the necessary act of sleeping seems like a huge reach that I don’t see many others adopting.
At the end of the day I’m not trying to call for a boycott or anything, I’m just curious if other people feel the same dystopian energy emitting from this app and ones like it. People in the comments section for the trailer seem to enjoy the idea and were ready to meme about it and talk about what sleep positions they’d unlock, so maybe I’m simply aging out of the target audience for these kinds of apps. I’ll stick with the real mainline Pokémon games, thanks. Have you heard about Pokémon Sleep? Are you excited for the app or do you see it as invasive and/or corporate? Are apps like this useful or just ways to baby people into doing basic tasks? Go outside, realize that the Pokémon Go craze is over, and head inside back to sleep in the comments below!
