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“Where’s Wally?” demand the covers of dozens of Martin Handford’s picture books. This has gone on long enough. The question we should ask ourselves is, “Why?” What is the purpose of locating Wally? What is in it for us?

 The same question might be asked of the four other characters the same author demands we locate, namelym Wizard Whitebeard, Woof, Odlaw and Wenda.

Does complying not simply making us complicit in what is likely to be an unlawful surveillance campaign, an infringement of privacy at least, if not civil liberties? 

If any of them are activists, might we not be imperilling their civil rights? Or, if they were covert agents of the state, we might be undermining delicate counterterrorism operations.  Why rely on human agents for automisable surveillance tasks if not to condition Wally’s fellow citizens to see themselves as part of the machinery of mutual surveillance.

If we discount the clear wider social concerns, is the Wally phenomenon not encouraging an unhealthy personality cult and normalising mass stalking.

It is also outmoded. In this digital age the whereabouts of Wally and his cohorts would be more efficiently found using artificial intelligence techniques. 

For all its shortcomings and dangers AI can already be used to free us from robotic uses of our intelligence for more creative ones. We should take full advantage. Our kids should be honing their Javascript rather than wasting their time with a routine image recognition task.

Another hypothesis is that the Wally-seeking imperative is posed by the character Wally himself. If this is the case, should we not be concerned by his ceaseless demand for our attention?

 Psychologists will tell us that the demands to be seen and pursued are typical of someone who reliant on constant affirmation. Who but a rampant narcissist would keep up this attention seeking charade for nearly forty years?

Let’s be cynical for a second: What better way would there be for an egomaniac in search of biddable acolytes than to induce an unquenchable need to find their leader’s likeness in any given scene.

  We should, finally, recognise that, after nearly four decades, Wally’s location has proved to be of no material importance. It is high time we accept this and stopped concerning ourselves with it.

In doing so we might ask ourselves: Who made us responsible for finding Wally anyway? Surely he has friends and family who can look for him? We should rest assured somebody else will find him if necessary.

And, if not, he can just stay lost. He has all the necessary tools to navigate and make himself known. Could he not simply instagram selfies with geolocation like the rest of us?

Finally, I must ask, would Wally search for us if we were lost in a large crowd? I think not. I for one would need to see signs of reciprocation before investing more time in searching for him. ■

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None of the characters in this story is a real person, other than the pianist.