The backlash against crazily popular augmented reality game Pokemon GO continues to grow, with questions ranging from privacy through to it (seriously) being a capitalist big business plot.

Starting at the stupid, but perhaps least insane argument is that of privacy, with revelations that Pokemon GO on iPhone was asking for full access to a user’s Google account.

Remembering that game developer Niantic, Inc. is a Google spinoff company and it is funded in part by Google, let alone that many apps ask for intrusive access to accounts (be that right or wrong), the media went into a full blown frenzy about how evil that app was for asking for such access.

Niantic responded by saying the app did not require access to Gmail and Google Drive accounts, that the app was requesting access by mistake, and that they would be updating the app so it didn’t ask for those permissions in future.

That should have really been the end of the matter, again let alone that many apps do ask for similar permissions, but insert former not so funny comedian and now Senator Al Franken who has taken up the “good fight” (take that with serious sarcasm) against the evil Pokemon GO app.

“I am concerned about the extent to which Niantic may be unnecessarily collecting, using, and sharing a wide range of users’ personal information without their appropriate consent,” a letter from the Senator to Naintic reads. “As the augmented reality market evolves, I ask that you provide greater clarity on how Niantic is addressing the issues of user privacy and security, particularly that of its younger players.”

Franken is apparently seriously concerned about data being harvested from children, making it the first time the Senator has taken any serious concern about children and data collection in his eight years in office.

Somebody think of the children

Despite being nearly universally praised by medical professionals for encouraging exercise, the next stream of Pokemon GO hate comes down to the fact that in some cases, characters in the game are located in “inappropriate” places for children.

In one report covering Australia and New Zealand where the game first launched, it’s alleged that Pokemon GO is luring children to outlaw motorcycle clubs, nude beaches, brothels and even places where gay men have sex.

There’s also the case in O’Fallon, Missouri where allegedly Pokemon GO was used to lure “about eight or nine people” (counting is apparently hard when writing a sensationalistic story) to a place where they could be mugged.

Apparently the bad guys in this case used Pokemon GO to find their victims by anticipating where people might go to PokeStops, locations where players can go to collect items such as eggs and more Poke Balls, the latter being used to capture more Pokemon.

What’s interesting in this case is that the muggings didn’t occur in broad daylight but late at night (which should naturally beg the question: how stupid are people to be wandering around in sketchy neighborhoods in the middle of the night?), versus anything Pokemon GO has to do with it.

Anti-capitalism

The most bizarre, and perhaps hilariously funny backlash against Pokemon GO is an idea that somehow it’s all a capitalist plot by big business to take money away from small business.

Putting aside reports that Pokemon GO is driving insane amounts of sales at small businesses, the social justice warrior morons at Vox claim that the game is “everything that is wrong with late stage capitalism.”

A block quote because it’s hard to paraphrase something that would be difficult to even make up:

If you were looking to have fun with some friends 50 years ago, you might have gone to a bowling alley. Maybe you would have hung out at a diner or gone to the movies.

These were all activities that involved spending a certain amount of money in the local economy. That created opportunities for adults in your town to start and run small businesses. It also meant that a teenager who wanted to find a summer job could find one waiting tables or taking tickets at the movie theater.

You can spend money on Pokémon Go too. But the economics of the game are very different. When you spend money on items in the Pokémon Go world, it doesn’t go into the pocket of a local Pokémon entrepreneur — it goes into the pockets of the huge California- and Japan-based global companies that created Pokémon Go.

The general idea is that people spending money in Pokemon GO aren’t spending money in their local economies; the article even goes further with claims that Pokemon GO (we’re not making this up) will cause declining interest rates and economic growth.

Whatever the drugs the writer is on, please feel free to share them.

You don’t have to a be a fan of Pokemon GO to appreciate the benefits the app has, particularly in getting people more active and mainstreaming augmented reality, but this backlash is nothing more than a severe case of what’s commonly called “tall poppy syndrome,” a social phenomenon in which people, or in this case an app, that have earned stature in the community are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticised because their talents or achievements.

Image credit: meme/unknown source