Pokemon, Go Away, or The Strangest Stories Related to Pokemon Go

The new Pokemon Go app has been gaining rapid popularity in the world for the last week, which became available for download in the App Store and Play Market on July 6. In addition to the revival of interest in anime cartoons of the early 2000s, dedicated to the battles of pocket monsters with each other, the application attracted attention to augmented reality technologies: players need to look for Pokemon in real-life locations around them, challenge them to duels and try to catch if a virtual monster is defeated.

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Mass hysteria has not yet engulfed Russia: the release of the application in our country is only expected. But during the week of the existence of the game with fanatical Pokemon catchers, a lot of ridiculous, funny and simply strange cases have happened. We present a selection of such stories in this material.

It's gone too far. More precisely, 19-year-old Wyoming resident Shyla Wiggins went too far: going down to the river in search of a Polivaga or some other water Pokemon, she found a man's corpse on the shore.

In Wellington, a couple of Pokemon Go players found a Pokemon training ground in the middle of the ocean by renting a kayak. Among other things, they found out that the man who handed over the kayak to them is not just playing Pokemon Go, but is also part of the team that controls the training area located in the middle of the ocean.

The Pokemon Go app has also helped the development of the group travel industry: in Portland (Oregon, USA), drivers agree to take players around the area for a fee so that they don't have to walk in search of monsters. Moreover, snacks and drinks are included in the price.

Further — more. PokeWalk startup offers its services: employees can "walk" players' smartphones to train existing Pokemon and search for new ones. If the trainers return the smartphone without replenishing the collection with new monsters, they promise to return the money.

For some players, the app has caused an existential crisis. A video blog was created on YouTube, the owner of which first talked about how she was tired of these damn Pokemon trainers appearing every now and then near her workplace, and then she got hooked on the game when she tried to catch all the Pokemon in the building. "Now I'm wandering around shouting, "Oh no, go back, a little to the left, there's a Catfish sitting there!" I want to catch them all, but I feel so stupid! This is not what I expected to do at the age of 27."

Reddit user Jonathan Theriot probably didn't think he'd be catching Pokemon when his wife went into labor. But it happened: he ran around the ward and tried to catch Pidgie hiding under the bed on which his wife was preparing to give birth.

We turn to the dark side of the issue. According to police reports, armed robbers use the geolocation of the application to lure unsuspecting players to secluded places where they are breaking in search of rare Pokemon.

The mechanisms of the game accidentally placed some Pokemon in places where catching them would be simply unacceptable for moral and ethical reasons. For example, on the territory of the Ground Zero Memorial, located on the site of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Another location of the game was accidentally placed on the territory of Auschwitz. Yes, players wander around the former concentration camp in search of Pokemon Rattata.

An Australian man was fired from his job at a real estate company after he wrote an angry bombastic post on Facebook that he could not download the application in the country. In the post, he claimed that Singapore is full of stupid people and that the national IQ will decrease if he leaves the state.

Soldiers serving at the Lewis-McCord military base near the city of Tacoma (Washington, USA) were seen sneaking into a closed area in search of Pokemon. "Since the Pokemon Go app was released about a week ago, several cases of serious injuries and damage during the game have been recorded. Do not chase Pokemon into the territory of office buildings, restricted access zones and houses located on the base," the base's Facebook page says.

The game mechanism also located one of the Pokemon training grounds on the territory of the Baptist Church in Westboro (Topeka, Kansas), known for its homophobic, anti-Islamic, anti-Catholic and other "anti-" views. One of the players took the training ground, located in the church, under his control with the help of a pink pokemon Klefeyri under the nickname Love Is Love (Love is love). However, the ministers of the cult were not at a loss: they began to train the Pokemon Jigglypuff in order to arrange a duel against Love Is Love. "No more sin!" they wrote on the church's Twitter account. "We are trying to speak all the languages available to us," said the head of the church, Steve Drain.

The New Yorker said that the girl revealed the fact of his infidelity thanks to Pokemon Go. The fact is that Evan Scribner saw his ex-girlfriend last week, and after hanging out decided to catch some Pokemon nearby. But when Evan returned home, his current lover saw that he had recently caught a Pokemon near his ex-girlfriend's house. Guys, be careful with such stupid failures.