CATRIONA STEWART

How Pokemon Go can save us from all our woes

THIS is the tipping point, this. This is what it’s come to. The last month has seen the fragile psyche of once-Great Britain fracture, splinter and crumble. Now it is rapidly grinding to dust.

Boris Johnson was mercilessly gone, only to suddenly return in a role that sees him charged with international diplomacy, the man who once said: “Orientals ... have larger brains and higher IQ scores. Blacks are at the other pole.”

He’s currently scouring the map for Rhodesia.

There is a new Prime Minister because the big boys who done it ran away. Larry the Downing Street cat ran the country until the Queen came back her holidays.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s admirable principles have become irritating hindrances while his challenger, Angela Eagle, launched her campaign with advertising from a Superdrug perfume range. The tabloids are distressed by a female PM, having not had the chance to devise a “flaunting her figure” equivalent for a husband in a suit. Politics has been a baffling, muggy affair.

Politics and famous wombs. Both Theresa May and Jennifer Aniston have been forced to defend their uterine choices. Mrs May’s barren lacuna cleverly saw off her prime ministerial challenger. Aniston is fed up of two decades of “is she, isn’t she” and wrote a sensible, pointed essay about media objectification.

In a quagmire of madness, the best sense from a Hollywood star.

Overseas: police shootings, terrorist attacks, a buffoon looming for American president.

Who are we and what do we want? Are we still European? No one knows.

All this confusion has led to an unexpected yet unsurprising twist: the entire country is slowly regressing to childhood, one smartphone at a time.

Since July 5 nearly eight million people have downloaded the Pokemon Go app to their phones.

An explanation: Pokemon was a Game Boy game – where the player had to catch wee creatures – updated for the modern day.

A smartphone allows you to be tracked in real time. Players use this technology to “catch” Pokemon characters by virtually throwing Poke Balls at them. So, your phone shows you what’s in front of you via your camera but the app superimposes a virtual Pokemon Go reality on top.

Serious newspapers have serious, in-depth features about how to snare Pokemon. There are PokeStops at international landmarks where you can collect virtual aids to help you catch more virtual critters. There is a PokeStop outside my office where players wander like zombies. You have to cautiously tiptoe, hoping you’re not stepping on a Spearow you can’t see.

The game is the perfect antidote to a perfect storm: there is no time limit, no consequences. You cannot lose. It combines smart phones, nostalgia and escapism. The reason for its existence is to force you to go out into the world rather than isolate yourself in front of a screen.

Yet Pokemon Go is a perfect analogy for everything wrong with us – running around, heads down, eyes averted, concentrating on chasing something completely abstract. Nay, something that does not exist.

But maybe Pokemon Go is the key to a more manageable future.

Next, please, let’s have apps designed to superimpose order on chaos until reality matches its virtual counterpart.

This confusion has led to an unsurprising twist: the entire country is slowly regressing to childhood, one smartphone at a time