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First it was creative, then mildly entertaining, then it became a fad and now it’s just out of control: That addictive app/game known as Pokemon Go.
How out of control? So much so that now players are going completely psychotic and are having to be restrained. No joke.
As reported by the UK’s Mirror, a man was recently restrained because he claimed to be “possessed by the Pokemon demon” and sought respite in the animated characters of the game.
The man, as shown in a cellphone video of the incident, had to be held down by four men at the Bank of Brazil in Rio Grande do Norte, the Mirror noted. Footage of the freak-out shows the Brazilian man appearing to become possessed while playing the app. As he’s being held down, he later begins making strange noises. Throughout the video he can be heard shouting, “Pokémon, Pokémon!”
Reports noted that the man was arrested and taken to a police station in Netal after the incident. While there, he allegedly told officers that as he was waiting in line at the bank he suddenly began having “strange thoughts and lost control.” It wasn’t long before he was released on bail.
This, by far, isn’t the only weird incident involving Pokemon. US Weekly reports that in July, the game led to the discovery of a dead body. Teenager Shayla Wiggins was exploring a river in rural Wyoming as she was attempting to catch a water Pokemon and happened upon a dead body. She told CNN she would likely have never gone down that way were it not for the game. In one way, though, she said she was “thankful” because by playing, “I feel like I helped find his body. He could have been there for days.”
O’Fallon, Missouri police have reported that armed robbers were using the app to attract victims and lure them to isolated spots. Four teens robbed about a dozen players with a handgun. O’Fallon police, in a Facebook post, wrote that they believe the scheme was set up is that the robbers added “a beacon to a Pokestop to lure more players.” Police said the robbers used the app to find people loitering around the middle of a parking lot or whatever location they were in.”
Officials with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland want Pokemon’s creator, Niantic, to take the historic sites off of locations where players can look for characters. In the Holocaust museum there are at least three Pokestops, and frankly, officials say they don’t believe it’s “appropriate” to play the game in the musuem, “which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism,” said Andrew Hollinger, the museum’s communications director, in an interview with the Washington Post.
You can see more weird Pokemon occurrences here. If you care about your own health and well-being, though, you might want to stay away from the game.
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