A 24-Year-Old Guy Quit His Job To Chase Pokemon Around In Pokemon Go
Guardian – The 24-year-old Kiwi [Tom Currie] quit his job in Auckland last week to embark on a two month tour of New Zealand, with the aim of capturing all of the Pokémon released on smartphone game Pokémon Go last week.
“I wanted to have an adventure,” Currie said. “I have been working for six years and I was desperate for a break. And Pokémon gave me the chance to live that dream.”
Currie has booked 20 bus trips around New Zealand and, in less than a week, has already visited six South Island towns – and caught Pokémon at every stop. So far he has captured 90 of the 151 Pokémon released on the game.
A week in, and Currie’s adventure is both exhilarating and exhausting. On occasion he has hunted till 3am and he says he sleeps deeply now because of the “miles and miles” he walks each day.
“I think the most exciting experience so far was in Sumner, Christchurch, which has become a hot spot for Pokémon hunters,” Currie said. “There were about 100 people there hunting. And some of these people would usually be shut up at home and really reclusive. Hunting for Pokémon is bringing them into the real world. It was such a buzzy atmosphere, when someone spotted a rare Pokémon they would shout out to alert the crowd.”
I’m nowhere near as down on Pokemon Go as some folks around here but I’m pretty firmly opposed to the whole “asshole quits job to do asshole shit” news stories. So on a superficial level, I hate this dude. But I fully believe what he’s saying about Pokemon Go here so I’m conflicted. People fixate on how it’s such a dumb thing, a waste of time, see the problems with people being tethered to their phones. But in reality it’s getting a lot of people out there in the world, giving people some sort of underlying thread to talk to other people (whether you’re playing it or mocking people playing it), and also doing more to get kids outside and moving than a near-decade of Michelle Obama’s youth fitness campaign. It’ll probably die out like other crazy cultural phenomena — remember Farmville invites or the Candy Crush music ringing through trains every single day? — but it seems like a mostly positive evolution for one of these things. Future potential employers may laugh at his dumb millennial time off but I bet this dude will come back in better physical shape, rested, and hopefully with some interesting life experiences from the times he disconnected from enslaving Squirtles in different regions.
On a pure Pokemon Go competition level though, guess who’s still employed, got 60 out of 151 Pokemon on Pokemon Go, and isn’t taking buses around like some poor piece of shit (but did spend $20 on incense like a different yet more affluent piece of shit):
You see me and my level 1000 Starmie coming to your local gym, Tom Currie, your Pokemon better run the other fucking way. The Poke pain train is coming through. CHOO CHOOOOOOOOOOO