Memetic Lifecycles

[jducoeur]

Hypothesis: the faster a cultural phenomenon takes off and the bigger it gets, the faster it will peak and then fade into being a niche thing. Fifteen minutes of fame can, sometimes, be fifteen seconds.

I've had this theory in the back of my mind for a long time, but Pokemon Go looks like it'll make a *lovely* data point to examine...

Comments

[drwex]

The concept of "flash in the pan" has been around a long time.

That said, PoGo is tapping into a very large and well-established fan base with literally decades of interaction behind it. Those fans have been willing to pile onto most of the offerings in the franchise. Separating that out from the first-mover advantage that PoGo has (and its predecessors, including Ingress) failed to capture would be a neat trick.

[jducoeur]

Yeah -- the thing here is that Pokemon Go is *way* bigger, and in particular way *older*, than I've seen for traditional Pokemon. Most of the people I see getting into it have no apparent connection to the established Pokemon ecosystem. So the interesting question is, do these folks come and go quickly, or stick around? I'm quite curious...

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I've seen a lot of teens around my town doing it in small groups. In public, even!

I bought a Pokemon poster some 17 years ago, so I'm pre-gosh-they-are-cute'd, and I used to watch the TV show. I'm probably an outlier, as any older geek-associated person might be, and as I mostly associate with people close to my age, I have no idea what the actual Pokemon Go demographics are. There must be some kind of analysis out -- or will be soon.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

As far as outliers go, ALL of my game design contacts seem to be deep into PoGo :-)

[etherial.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with you there. The only reason the original Pokemon missed me is that I skipped a grade in elementary school. Every release has expanded that fanbase by adding a significant age bracket at the bottom and another smaller one at the top.