Pokemon GO! Pros & Cons of this Addiction Candy

We’ve all heard about the latest Pokemon GO! that’s raging around the whole world.

There are two types of people in this world:

1. Who play Pokemon GO! and love it to death;
2. Who don’t play Pokemon GO! and despise it to death.

Why do people love it so much?

I had to admit – I’m addicted too. That’s why I want to talk about it! Why is this rage so real and surreal at the same time.

1. It’s a virtual reality game – Pokémon GO is built on Niantic’s ‘Real World Gaming Platform’. So it syncs the virtual reality world with real locations, to encourage players to ‘search far and wide’ in the real world to discover Pokemon to catch them.
2. In case you don’t know how it works, you see a map of you, with your profile.
3. It’s a virtual reality game where people become ‘Pokemon trainers’ and catch ‘Pokemon’ – about #135 types now, that show up on your phone screen.

PROS

1. It’s been a good excuse for couples or groups to go out on “Pokemon hunting dates”
2. People who were home-bound with autism were starting to walk out of their homes (Autism Speaks article “Pokémon GO is giving young adults with ASD their own unique reason to leave the house, albeit if it is to catch pocket monsters”)
3.  People had been doing more exercise! In order to hatch ‘eggs’ people have caught along the way, you have to walk a certain number of kilometers 2km, 5km or 10km in order for the egg to mature and ‘hatch’. 

Despite all the advantages you saw of Pokemon (also it is cheap and a real good time-killer!), we should look how to craze is going. Now that Pokémon is such a big viral thing right now – you see people playing it literally EVERYWHERE. I live in Hong Kong where the craze is almost abnormal – in the dense and packed city of Hong Kong, people gather around

Public parks…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BIXisashd-7/
(Victoria Park at 1am after midnight on Friday night)

Trams…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BIfES3aDnxZ/

Hospitals…

The CONS is that people had been walking without looking, walking into rivers, walking into people in the street, lower working efficiency, stuffing trams with people who don’t get off, going into police stations, hospitals or trespassing just to catch a rare Pokemon – the addiction is unstoppable.

But just some interesting ideas.

Pokemon Go is owned by Niantic, Inc, which’s CEO is John Hanke. John Hanke is also the CEO of the CIA-funded firm called Keyhole, Inc, therefore there had been conspiracies with the privacy problems. “Keyhole, Inc” is a pioneering software development company specializing in geospatial data visualization applications, funded by In-Q-Tel to aid CIA. The name “Keyhole” is a homage to the KH reconnaissance satellites, the original eye-in-the-sky military reconnaissance system now some 50 years old. In the way, the theory believes that Pokemon Go is a way by the US New World Government to control people around the world – their locations, gender, google account, what do they see in their camera, and that places in Pokestops are lures for Niantic, Inc to analyze locations worth spying on.

See this video to learn more about these theories:

If this is really true, Pokemon Go just means a total lack of real privacy.

As I had analyzed Niantic, Inc’s Pokemon Go Terms and Conditions, I had highlighted a particular point:

According to the Terms & Conditions, Information Collected, Niantic, Inc will collect certain information…e.g. Google account…so we will collect PII (such as your Google email address,…and/or your Facebook registered email address) that our privacy settings with Google, PTC or Facebook permit us to access.

Technically according to the terms and conditions shown, as ‘Pokemon Trainers’, if we had used our real Google or Facebook account, certain location that could be to used to identify you may be collected – including emails or passwords.
Note: PLEASE be notified and check up on your passwords and change them regularly, in particular for bank accounts and other personal information. Cyber hacking for passwords is certainly not rare anymore with the increase in technological advances through out these years.

Please give comments (if you have any)!