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People Should Not Play Pokemon At Auschwitz

People Should Not Play Pokemon At Auschwitz

Here’s something I never thought I’d have to say.

People should not play Pokemon at Auschwitz.

Nor at the Sept. 11 memorial in New York City, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, or Arlington National Cemetery.

You would think this obvious, but apparently it isn’t. According to reports, people have been playing the game in these sacred spaces, often to the consternation of those who run them. As a tweet from Arlington put it last week, “We do not consider playing ‘Pokemon Go’ to be appropriate decorum on the grounds of ANC.”

Apparently, we have reached a point in our devolution where people can’t figure such things out for themselves.

As you may not know if you have a life, Pokemon — short for Pocket Monsters — are digital creatures, characters in what was originally a Japanese video game (there have since been movie and television spin-offs) that’s been around since the ’90s. The latest iteration, Pokemon Go, has become a global sensation since its July 6 release; Survey Monkey calls it the most successful mobile game in U.S. history, with 21 million daily active users.

You play it on your smartphone. It’s synced with the real world so that Pokemon characters pop up on screen as you go various places. Your object is to capture them. Even, apparently, if you’re at the crematoria in Auschwitz or John F. Kennedy’s grave at Arlington.

When a Washington Post reporter questioned the propriety of doing this at the Holocaust Museum, “Angie,” age 37, responded with the game’s catchphrase: “Gotta catch ’em all.”

To repeat: Angie, age 37, the Holocaust Museum … “Gotta catch ’em all.”

I’ve never been so ready to throttle someone I’ve never even met.

I’m trying really hard here not to do a you-kids-better-get-off-my-lawn rant, but seriously, once upon a time didn’t adults seem more, well … adult? People were … older then. My dad turned 37 in 1963; I cannot, for the life of me, picture him twirling a Hula Hoop at Arlington.

You may find that a hypocritical observation coming from a guy who is pushing 60 and still reading Captain America, but I stand by it. I am of the generation that invented youth culture, that spat in the eye of aging, that declined to stop having — or being — fun once the crow’s feet came; I’ve always felt that was one of the best things about us. We are, as Bob Dylan famously sang, “Forever Young.”

But I submit that there is a glaring difference between being forever young and forever immature.

And, that when you lack the common sense and simple decency to put your toys aside and stand awed in a place sanctified by suffering and sacrifice, you have crossed fully from the one to the other. Nor are you just immature. You’re shallow and self-centered, too. And you have no apparent capacity for reverence and reflection.

But you are hardly unique. We live in a world where many of us have longer and more soulful relationships with the screens in their palms than the people in their lives. They forget to look up sometimes. And they miss things because of it.

Important things. Painful things. Things that anchor us and lift us and bind us in shared humanity.

The Holocaust Museum is a memorial to 11 million people who died, 1.1 million of them at the camps that comprise Auschwitz. The National Sept. 11th Memorial and Museum remembers 2,977 people who perished in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. Arlington National Cemetery is America’s most hallowed ground, final resting place for men and women who answered their country’s call.

These places and places like them deserve to be treated with respect.

And there’s something else I never thought I’d have to say.

 

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

Photo: Theodore Belizaire plays the augmented reality mobile game “Pokemon Go” by Nintendo in Times Square, New York City, U.S. July 11, 2016. REUTERS/Mark Kauzlarich

Is Pokémon Go The Next Big Brother?

Is Pokémon Go The Next Big Brother?

If you own a smartphone, there’s a decent chance you are one of the world’s nearly 18 million Pokémon Go players. Launched last Thursday, Pokémon Go is a GPS-synchronized augmented reality game that places the classic, colorful Nintendo creatures in the real world — or at least, against the live backdrop provided by your phone’s front-facing camera. Users are encouraged to “catch ‘em all.” But is there a chance the game is catching something of theirs as well?

Minnesota Senator Al Franken certainly seems to think so. Earlier this week he sent a public letter to Niantic, the company that developed Pokémon Go, requesting a full report on how they use players’ personal information. His letter stated that the app could threaten the right to privacy, as the game’s privacy policy states that user information “can be shared with The Pokémon Company and ‘third-party service providers.” Franken also described how Niantic treats this personal information as a “business asset,” that could be revealed or transferred to other companies that buy out or merge with Niantic. The Minnesota Senator asked for a response by August 12. Niantic has yet to answer.

Even before Senator Franken’s letter, however, some Pokémon Go users expressed concern about how Niantic required “full access” to their personal Google accounts in order to play the game: Theoretically, this means that Niantic had the ability to read and send emails from a personal Gmail account, but also to records calendar entries, directions, and notes. Earlier this week, Niantic issued an update and clarified that they only use the most basic account information to run the app.

On the other hand, even the most basic information is a valuable commodity for third-party companies. On iOS gaming news site Touch Arcade, an anonymous mobile game producer explained how apps so effectively dig up and sell user information — key facts like gender, age, location, and even interests.

“Every time you play a free to play game, you just build this giant online database of who you are, who your friends are and what you like and don’t like. This data is sold, bought and traded between large companies I have worked for,” the producer wrote. Even more alarming is that his experiences date back a few years, before huge mobile games like Angry Birds burst onto the mobile gaming scene. Data-mining techniques have only become more sophisticated since then.

Still, this doesn’t doesn’t necessarily mean Niantic is selling your personal information. Despite being free to play, Pokémon Go has a number of in-game purchases — small payments that can be made to quickly upgrade Pokémon and acquire rare items. This “freemium” model has proven to be quite lucrative, but Pokémon Go has taken it to the next level. For example, Think Gaming estimated the daily revenue for hit game Candy Crush Saga at $442,296. Business Insider reported Pokémon Go’s revenue might be as high as $2.3 million per day. Remarkably, these figures aren’t even coming from a large consumer base. Most people avoid in-game purchases, meaning that the bulk of the funds are from a very small number of players. In fact, mobile marking company Swrve found that over 60 percent of mobile game revenue comes from just 0.13 percent of users.

Pokémon Go has become a highly lucrative property in the short week it’s been available to download. Nintendo’s stock has soared by over 25 percent since the game’s release. At the peak of this spike, market analysts valued the game at a whopping $7 billion. Niantic CEO John Hanke has announced that they plan to open up Pokémon Go to digital advertising.

Of course, these developments don’t guarantee Pokémon Go any long-term financial success — the game has all the markings of a brief, furious fad. But for now, it’s the juggernaut of the gaming world. It has so much going for it that it doesn’t seem to need to depend on selling user information — though it certainly is collecting quite a bit about each and every player, even after Niantic’s update. Where exactly all that data ends up, however, remains a mystery.

So go forth and catch as many (or few) pokémon as you like. Just be aware of how much you reveal to companies like Niantic — if the game is free, you’re the one being bought and sold.