The Holocaust Museum Kindly Asks Its Patrons To Stop Playing Pokémon Go

SteveHolt10 years ago

Future patrons of the Holocaust Museum, beware. The museum is not taking kindly to Pokémon Go, the new fad app that has taken smartphone users and ’90s kids by storm.

Yes, the Holocaust Museum understands your need to catch Pokémon Go “on the go,” but it would prefer if you left Squirtle dancing around the Auschwitz exhibit alone while learning about the deadliest and most gruesome genocide of the last 300 years.

Unfortunately for the museum leadership, the museum is a ‘Pokéstop,” meaning it is filled with free in-game items for users around the location. They are less than thrilled about the whole thing.

From The Washington Post:

“Playing the game is not appropriate in the museum, which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism,” Andrew Hollinger, the museum’s communications director, told The Post. “We are trying to find out if we can get the museum excluded from the game.”

The Holocaust Museum’s plight highlights how apps that layer a digital world on top of the real one can create awkward situations, especially since the owners of the physical locations often cannot weigh in on how their spaces are being used.

And it appears there have been some unsettling Pokémon discoveries in the museum, like Koffing — a cruel purple blob that emits poisonous gas as a method of destroying its enemy.

One image circulating online appears to show a player encountering an unsettling digital critter inside the museum: a Pokémon called Koffing that emits poisonous gas floating by a sign for the museum’s Helena Rubinstein Auditorium. The auditorium shows the testimonials of Jews who survived the gas chambers.

Come on, man.

Be warned, Pokémon lovers. If you came to the Holocaust Museum to catch Pokémon instead of spending the afternoon learning terrible things and being emotionally torn to shreds, you’re going to be disappointed. This place is not for you.

The museum says it’s cool with everybody using social media while visiting the exhibits, but “this game falls very much outside of that.” Yeah, I’d tend to agree. I can’t think of a less appropriate place in the country to play this dumb game, actually.

Be cool, nerds. You can have the rest of D.C..

[via Washington Post]

Image via YouTube