It seemed that the world was going to end. Newspapers did not talk about anything else. Hundreds of people appeared on television walking like zombies, attracted by a force no one else could see. They did not feel the heat, that scorching sun that empties the streets of Madrid every summer. Only the disoriented tourists who seem to have the faulty thermostat. There were stampedes in public places, crowded with people. The police made warnings. In the end, nothing happened: Pokemon Go happened, as all fashions.

The augmented reality video game took over from the Olympic Games in summer interests and occupied the memory of more than 20 million smartphones in the early days. There were also catastrophists who predicted the end of personal relationships, replaced by virtual reality: a world where the intangible replaces the real. New generations that refuse contact with their peers. A chapter of Black Mirror in the animated version.

Three and a half years of probation for a video playing Pokemon Go in a Russian cathedral

Ruslán Sokolovski, a 22-year-old Russian law student, could hardly imagine that the occurrence of broadcasting a video playing. Pokemon Go at the Yekaterinburg Blood Cathedral would eventually cost him a three-and-a-half year sentence. A court in that industrial city in the Urals has imposed on him Thursday this sentence after declaring him guilty of transgressing several articles of the Penal Code, including offense to the religious sentiments of the faithful, incitement to hatred and hostility and humiliation of human dignity.

The trial, followed with great interest in social networks, has divided the Russian Orthodox Church, considered the majority confession of the country. Among those who consider that the judge, Yekaterina Shoponiak, was merciful and those who believe that the trial was a spectacle. It has only served to alienate the youth from ecclesiastical representatives.

The sentence has made Sokolovski, his family and friends happy, because the prosecution was far more severe than the judge and asked the young man for nothing less than three and a half years in prison. However, all articles of the Penal Code for which the student has been convicted could also have been applied with much lighter penalties than the one imposed.

Pokemon Go: The game in the period of Armageddon

It seemed that the memory of the most critical of the players had forgotten that we have all fallen into some similar vice, and generally innocuous. I plead guilty to hours lost with the Tetris. In analogical times, The Simple Solution to Rubik ‘s Cube sold nearly 7 million copies in 1981 and was one of the best selling titles in the US that year.

We have no record of Pokemon Go breaking families. On the contrary, they looked happy chasing Charmanders all together in the Retiro during the holidays. How crazy!  Those who just wanted to try the novelty ended up erasing the app to install more recent ones. And the real players kept playing, even if off the camera.