Maroon 5 releases their music video for "Don't Wanna Know", parodying the Pokemon GO craze as the band attempts to avoid capture by mobile phone-wielding fans.

The Pokemon GO mobile game phenomenon truly knows no bounds. What began as a humble but exciting mobile app based on a beloved creature-catching game series has now become a multimedia juggernaut, mirroring the original Pokemon craze nearly twenty years after it originally happened. The takeover is on a global scale - South Korean chains of Krispy Kreme began offering Pokemon-style donuts, just to cash-in on the craze - and it appears despite the game's many flaws that it is Pokemon GO's world now.

The worldwide obsession with Pokemon GO hasn't eluded celebrity attention, either. The mobile game that makes over $2 million USD per day has been making headlines almost weekly, and it was only a matter of time before some enterprising musicians made good on the game's popularity with a parody video. Maroon 5 released the music video for their new single, "Don't Wanna Know", a short few days ago, and while it isn't an official tie-in to the Pokemon franchise, it is very clearly a scathing satire of the craze shot from the perspective of the creatures being relentlessly hunted down.

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The video, seen above, follows the band as they are dressed up in not-quite-Pokemon costumes, balancing a life of stardom with the fact that some people are pursuing them constantly in an effort to capture them and add the band to their collection. It's a very strange video that also happens to feature a number of guest celebrity appearances - Shaq, who is inexplicably part-owner of an esports team, appears alongside other celebrities like Vince Vaughan as Maroon 5 lead singer Adam Levine tries to make sense of the world he finds himself in.

The music video does a fine job capturing the bizarre lengths some Pokemon GO gamers are willing to travel in order to capture a rare Pokemon, including an amusing scene that finds Levine waiting at a stop sign in his car as he observes hordes of people on either side of the street converging on one of his fellow creatures. While critics were initially skeptical of the game's ability to make people exercise, a recent study found that Pokemon GO users have collectively taken 100 billion steps, which is certainly enough to work off one of those Pokemon-themed Krispy Kreme donuts.

Like it or not, despite Niantic's stubborn refusal to improve a number of features that have been criticized for months now, Pokemon GO remains a big part of technological culture. Maroon 5's video is just another nod toward the most successful gaming app of all time, and gamers should expect more parodies until, mercifully, Pokemon GO's stranglehold on mobile gaming finally begins to loosen.

Pokemon GO is available now in select regions for iOS and Android mobile devices.

Source: YouTube