Ha, I heard about it Saturday from a chat room in a different online game I play (basically a Risk game for smart phones called Landrule) and then some people were talking about it at work yesterday, and I assumed it was something that had been going on for months that I just now heard about.
It's only been around a few weeks, at least for the general public.
Talk about going viral quickly.
Having said that, my nephew was really into Pokemon whenever the Gameboy version came out (late 90s?), and he got me to try the card version with him and my other nephew a couple times. I thought it was pretty stupid and only played it to humor him. But to each their own, I guess (and I hope my now 23 year old nephew is NOT playing it!...lol).