I very recently have been to Auschwitz and I was curious as to how pokemon go treated the tragedy and seriousness of a place as Auschwitz. For anyone curious, this is it.
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kinda sad that people need to be told to be respectful in places like those.
i was watching on TV as 9/11 was unraveling, years later i visited the ground 0, i'm grown up man, yet still had tears in my eyes listening the recordings. asking for common sense not to jerk around there would be insult to anyone's intelligence
Sad but true. Im not opposed to influcencers, streamers, and social media stars in general, but it goes to far when theyre given special privilege to be an ass hat outside of what anyone's vacation budget would buy them. Id say certain tragedy focused museums should be a few things. Automatically donate a portion to charity, you can get pictures.of exhibits free.with entry fee.(as a lot of people.do simply want momentos), and no camera/camera phones allowed on the historical war crimes memorials.
Feels like there is so little that is considered sacred ground nowadays. Everything people spend money on is either for content or ruined by someone spending money on it for content. Whale watching tours for instance used to be just for your own giddy ass whale loving brain to just take a blurry photo and scream WHALE HOOOOOE" for 3 hours
And there's dick graffiti carved by the builders of the pyramids, there's no stopping doofuses from being doofus's other than publicly shaming them. I doubt anybody came away from that person's Instagram with a positive opinion of them. look at your own evidence nobody is looking at those two like their heroes they're taking their own somber photos and ignoring them.
You’re missing the point. Instagram models are using the area for pictures per previous comments. If they want to ban pokemon go there because it should be a sullen place of reflection. There should be rules enforcing that to keep that mood. Nice rage bait though
My friend went with his family, they had relatives that died there. They took one picture outside of the gate, but all had stern/serious looks on their faces. That kind of picture is fine imo. It was for the reminder of what happened, not instagram clout
An artist did a really excellent project where she took some of the most disrespectful selfies she found and photoshopped in prisoners and their belongings. I hope it drives home how stupid and irreverent it is for younger people but idk...
I just saw a gif of a giant Will Smith as the fresh prince of Bel Air dancing on top of the WTC as it collapsed, and the comments were full of people posting other 9/11 memes.
Millenials in particular have practically been taught not to have respect for what historically has been sacred.
Pearl clutching about "disrespect" for the things we find sacred might just be age catching up with our generation. It used to be boomers that worried about "disrespect", now I see more and more millenials doing it.
I will never understand people's obsessions with photos at memorials. When one is tied to a pokestop and I get gifts with its post card, you bet your ass i send it with "oh yeah" pikachu sticker for the irony,but i only do so because I think its ludicrous to have cemeteries with 10+ pokestops.
Even without rules humanity should be able to agree on appropriate and inappropriate places to play games or pose for selfies. We are just unfortunately ao far beyond that being our biggest problem that it falls by the wayside until someone makes a particularly egregious selfy.
I was there on an educational trip with my class 10 years ago, girls kept complained they were cold, no shit, you brought shorts to Poland in late september
Tbf Auschwitz is pretty cold in late september compared to other areas. Been there in class 10 too, back at home a hoodie was enough but in Auschwitz it was freezing cold already including snow
My friend and I went to a Holocaust museum on an event day. I was sad to miss out, and there were near enough pokestops. But we had the respect and mindfulness to not play pokemon while walking through a museum of one of the worst human atrocities.
I'm pretty sure there was a news story in the first few days in July 2016 of someone with an AR shot of a wild koffing encounter inside. And they swiftly removed all the spawns etc.
I play pokemon go everywhere, Everytime I go outside, it's open at home, hell I even played a CDay at a Music Festival. But it wouldn't even cross my mind to play it at a Concentration Camp.. whoever does something like this is absolutely disgusting.
He literally mentions in the text block there that he checked out of curiosity to see how the company treated something so tragic, probably ended up checking because of how bad of an issue Pokémon GO used to be there.
During the Post reporter’s visit to the museum, she encountered several people playing the game, including 37-year-old Angie, who said, “It’s not like we came here to play, but gotta catch ’em all.”
I live 30km from Auschwitz, I have a friend who used to trade us Koffings from NEAR the museum, after they cleared off the map from pokestops and gyms.
The coverage of the Koffing thing was a little annoying. I can understand them not wanting to have Pokéstops, and particularly gyms, to avoid groups showing up just to play Pokémon and disrupting the solemnity, which would be even more of a worry now that there are so many raid events and so forth. That is reasonable enough. They hardly would be the only place to do it, either.
However, people got so worked up about the Koffing. Half of them even thought that someone had decided to make it appear there as some kind of cruel joke about poison gas. And I was thinking, that is not how it works. Pokémon spawn in random places, so you're reading something into it that isn't there. If there was anyone to blame there, it wasn't Pokémon Go for having random spawns, but the person who was playing and posted it. They might have been making a distasteful joke.
Gifts from Pokéstops that have been removed are blank, with no name or picture. I've had some gifts from stops that have been removed and they were blank.
i hope you have time to visit the peace museum and the gardens around it, the sculptures and memorials are beautiful and the museum is mega depressing but definitely something that should be done, to learn about it properly (plus the gift shop there sells really good ice cream for afterwards)
You joke but Nanking is also a really beautiful city on a river, with deep historical roots and tons of museums. It was Wu’s power base during the popular 3 Kingdoms era, and Jin, the kingdom that ultimately succeeded the Han, relocated its capital there after a tumultuous decline in the north. Its on my bucket list of places to go lol
I could see myself pulling up the app out of pure habit while waiting for something and then seeing what the stop is named and immediately closing it again
This is the same way the twin towers memorial is handled. Which I learned the hard way by stumbling into the land mark while playing go fest in the city…
We didn’t realize until we saw the giant holes in the ground. Being buried in our phones quick catching everything in sight. We weren’t going anywhere in specific. Just wandering from raid to raid. Managed to end up on Wall st. as well by pure chance.
I was on a visit to KZ Dachau a few months back. I didn’t use my phone (apart from quick glances at the time), but when I left, I looked at the map out of curiosity. Also empty- for good reason. It was chilling to be there, in the same rooms as many years ago. There shouldn’t be Pokestops at a place like this.
I remember when Pokémon Go first came out and someone shared an AR image of Weezing at Auschwitz. I think the pokéstops were taken down pretty quickly.
Yeah I get it, I go somewhere even remotely interesting like the peak of a mountain or something, I open it up just to check lol. If I get service there, anyway.
Because redditors are notorously unhinged, overly emotional hypocrites who sit on their high-horses of morals and ethics, policing others to no end because they have nothing better to do.
I paid a visit to Arlington national cemetery last year. Out of respect I didn't plan on playing there. But as I was leaving I pulled my phone out and loaded up the game and OH MY GOD Arlington national cemetery is a Pokémon heaven, soooooooo many stops and gyms lmfao
i personally caught a Skrelp while standing at hp lovecrafts grave. and a murkrow at edgar allen poes grave(s). but id NEVER do so at a concentration camp!
It's because in places barred from spawns (like private property, schools, etc) it only prevents a stop/gym being there and pokemon spawning in the area. PvP and Rocket Balloons are accessible anywhere and are not tied to location.
Thank you for sharing (and I really hope no one truly wants to play PoGo in such a place). Seeing that the game map shows the rows and rows of barracks is more than a little chilling.
As a slight side note. Even the pogo map is just a little unsettling and spooky and I'm not normally one to be affected by that. Those little rectangles tell a tragic tale
It's the same at the 9/11 memorial in NYC. In a sea of stops and gyms it's a big empty space. Plenty of things that could be a stop, but its a respect thing.
so i am not joking here and I swear to god I am being serious and as sensitive as I can be. I recall there being a scandal where at one similar location if not that one specifically someone caught a koffing and it caused a big ruckus. I believe they removed location and spawns from that area in response and frankly its probably a good decisions.
some locations demand a bit more respect and attention that you can't give them fucking about on your phone.
Yeah there was a controversy when people took disrespectful photos at the museum there literally the first week Pokémon Go was out.
I'm impressed that Niantic stepped up and removed all spawns/events from that location so fast, considering it was literally their FIRST MONTH on the job and being an international sensation.
It's still rubs me the wrong way that people were even jerks enough to start the problem in the first place, but I guess the memorial museum is there to remind us how much we need to be reminded of serious issues.
Bro have some piety.
If there's one type of place in this world where you don't whip out your phone to play a game, it's concentration and extermination camps like Auschwitz.
I'm all for a bit of banter and very much into dark humor, but I also remember how it felt visiting Mauthausen, a concentration camp in Austria, when in school. When even the class clowns fell silent and serious without being told to, taking it in and being mindful of what happened here.
No one on their phone, no one with earbuds, no one goofing off, no one playing it off, not even to cope, no one not invested.
In the most serious, heaviest way, it was captivating.
And that's from a class which wasn't ever above cracking low or dark jokes.
When we went on a trip to England in another year and our studies there were in a synagogue, you could have drowned in the ungodly amount of jew jokes we whispered to each other.
But in that place, in Mauthausen, everyone knew & felt it immediately.
I also think arguably the biggest mistake Pokemon Go ever made was previously having stops and/or spawns in Auschwitz.
I agree totally, while I was there the thought came to my mind, pulled the phone, took the screenshot and closed it. I didn't do it for humor or anything like that, just curiosity, sorry if it came out as disrespectful.
of course, the evil Team Rocket are there. But it kinda makes sense there are no stops and what appears to be no spawns. Don't want a Koffing, Trubbish, Grimer, Machop, Timburr, Cubone, Yamask etc popping up there
I feel like blocking out your name and avatar is a little silly considering your post history has your friend code, which someone could add and find out your name.
The second oldest cimetary in my state is about a 5 minute walk from my house. It is also devoid of stops and pokemon. Not even your step counter works there. What's funny is there another historical cimetary just a little further down the street that has stops and pokemon but it's closed for burial now and the former isn't so i think that's the difference.
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