Call it Pokémon Go Too Far: The new Pokémon Go app is being asked to stay out of the Holocaust Museum, the 9/11 Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
You know: places for quiet reverence.
Since its launch last week, the app has users running all over, collecting creatures that pop up on their phone screens at real-world locales. And at various “PokéStops,” players can get free in-game treats.
But the Pokémon critter Koffing, which emits a poisonous gas, popped up at a sign for the Holocaust Museum’s Helena Rubinstein Auditorium — which exhibits testimonials of Jews who survived the gas chambers.
Cue the museum’s communications director, Andrew Hollinger, to state the obvious: “Playing the game is not appropriate in . . . a memorial to the victims of Nazism.”
Koffing also showed up by one of the pools at the 9/11 Memorial, right next to the names of first responders who died in the Twin Towers bombings, prompting a 61-year-old Staten Island laborer who helped clean up Ground Zero to say: “It’s disrespectful to the people who lost families . . . This is like a sacred place.”
We’re not knocking the game, but “gotta catch ’em all” shouldn’t pull players where they don’t belong. Why not send the hunters to the zoo?