40 Of The Absolute Worst Places ‘Pokemon Go’ Wants You To Visit

Ever since Pokemon Go took over the whole damn world last week, pokemonsters have been showing up in all sorts of strange (and sometimes inappropriate or sketchy) places. A guy caught a pidgey while his wife gave birth. Two people trespassed at a zoo to catch virtual animals among the real animals (so meta). The Westboro Baptists continued their dumpster fire ways. A horrible story emerged about pokemon being found at the National Holocaust Museum, including a poison gas pokemon sighting we really hope is a hoax. Considering pokemon were also spotted at Auschwitz, we’re starting to think game developer Niantic didn’t think this through.

Niantic used their location data from a prior game (Ingress) to set up their Gyms and Pokestops for Pokemon Go. Considering this data is linked to landmarks — often created from user-supplied data — you can see how letting random Ingress players decide to pick “landmarks” and give them names might lead to some really strange results. This is why many depressing locations — like Ground Zero, a 9/11 memorial, and a controversial Confederate memorial — have been made Gyms and Pokestops in the game.

We thought it would be nice to round up some of the most odd places we’ve seen Pokemon Go sending its players. We’ll try to leave out the most depressing ones, because I know I don’t want to see anything else gruesome this awful week.

First up, yes, there are Gyms at Area 51. Someone trespassed there and found empty Gyms for the taking, which makes this joke we posted last week ever more relevant:

Some of the funniest, silliest, and just plain sketchiest Pokestops come courtesy of a new Reddit aptly titled “Sh*ttypokestops,” and here are some of our favorites from Reddit and from Twitter.

Let’s start with the obvious result when you let players tag and name locations…

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Never forget. [via]

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A live gator. Just an actual, f*cking live gator. [via]

Ah, yes. “Cross guy.” [via]

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Strip clubs, head shops, sex shops, and “Seattle’s only 24/7 mirrored gloryhole maze” were also destinations you just can’t miss in your quest to be the very best.

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“Fair Oaks’ premiere anal plug selection.” [via]

https://twitter.com/Vgr341/status/751539592818405376

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Some of these are quite literal:

This “Poke Stop” restaurant is now a pokestop. [via]

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“Young Human Entertainment” [via]

And some are just depressing:

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And these are just too damn real:

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There was even a Squirtle on the Mosul front line, caught by American volunteer Louis Park, who’s over there fighting ISIS with a Kurdish militia.

One pattern emerged when compiling this list. Gravesites and memorials were far, far too popular, as this small sampling can attest to:

https://twitter.com/coup707/status/753005367760564224

https://twitter.com/BenRegenspan/status/751588634919366656

And finally, these locations seem legit:

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Well, that settles it. We’re going to space, where — NASA assures us — there are no damn pokemon.

(Via r/Sh*ttypokestops, Gizmodo, BuzzFeed [1, 2], Mashable, Dorkly, Kotaku, The Verge, NY Mag, calexy4, Ben Regenspan, and Alex Hirsch)