is pokemon still a thing?
= new reply since forum marked as read
I read about it in Shoshana Zuboff’s book and could totally relate with the guy described in the book who found it invasive and felt desperate wrt lack of any recourse.
But times change and in retrospect this will all have been a bad idea. Like Bad Wolf bad 
.
I support this lawsuit:
https://www.inkl.com/news/pokemon-go-lawsuit-a-no-go-as-alberta-plaintiff-drops-legal-action
This was also a step in the right direction:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/7/21250594/alphabet-sidewalk-labs-toronto-quayside-shutting-down
I live in a part of the world where stalking, acid attacks and gang rapes are not unheard of. And I have had men (and some self loathing women) push the boundaries of decency on my street for three years as I was trying to recover from my mom’s death and other stresses.
I worried that I would be called a schizophrenic who thinks they are being “gangstalked”. A big part of the problem was that when poorly regulated emerging technologies are forced with deeply misogynistic men and self loathing women on board, women like me are stressed to the hilt.
I tried to be understanding, keep an open mind some. But I am done with all that.
We don’t have laws protecting people from poor data hygiene and these states are totally corrupt and misogynistic. They are okay with poor data hygiene when it enables harassment, but they like to ignore complaints when they can get away with pushing the boundaries.
I won’t be filing civil complaints at this point against the parties involved when I can figure out who all were involved. I don’t sue for money when I lose time, resources and health. That’s not a good thing for these guys.
I am planning to file serious complaints about some crap that was definitely not “in my head” and in no way acceptable. But this sort of shit violates the limits of decency.
I have speculated about what the deal is. Is it some sort of creepy and ill-conceived bot or not “test”? Real world “captcha” by the creepiest people in these uniformly creepy, invasive, worthless and shitty “emerging” systems. Most pathetically with astroturf hedge betting grifters playing both sides against the middle.
The problem is that you just sound crazy or daft if you can’t spell out all the in-between things explicitly, even when you can infer this much: “This looks sleazy, creepy, corrupt and deregulated”.
I really did try to be nice and understanding more than I wanted to. Type 1 errors, miscommunication etc being possibilities. But while some well-intentioned stuff was and is undoubtedly always there, it is easy to distinguish from the creepy rot.
I totally hear this woman:
Alberta lawsuit says Pokemon players are invading privacy
Associated Press
August 11, 2016
CALGARY, Alberta (AP) — A Canadian class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of an Albertan woman against California-based Niantic Inc., the creator of Pokemon Go, saying she's suffering from an invasion of privacy.
Barbra-Lyn Schaeffer said Wednesday that she's been inundated by Pokemon Go players at her home 160 kilometers (99 miles) northeast of Calgary ever since it became the site of a Pokemon gym. Pokemon Go gyms are places where players congregate and battle it out to take control of the area for a selected team. Usually, gyms are designated to churches or public buildings.
In the U.S., a Massachusetts man also had his home designated as a gym. In his case, his home was on the site of a former church.
Schaeffer said people have been trying to crawl over her fence into the grounds of her home.
"The way I look at it, the game is fine. My kids play it, my grandkids play it but just don't do it at my house," Schaeffer said.
Schaeffer said there are people sitting out in front of their home at all hours of the day and night.
"We moved out here to be in the quiet, not to have people climb up over my fence," she said. "The last thing we need is strangers trying to peer in our windows. On Saturday, someone flew a drone up into our yard to play the game."
The lawsuit was filed in Calgary and has not been certified by the courts, which determines whether it can proceed.
The game sends players into the real world to search for digital monsters known as Pokemon, which appear on their smartphones screen. It uses digital beacons — called Pokestops and Pokegyms — and Schaeffer said there are plenty of them in their tiny hamlet of Torrington, population 179.
"There's six spots in Torrington which is really ironic for a town as small as it is," she said.
Schaeffer said she sent a request to Niantic asking her home be removed and only received a computer-generated response saying the company would look into it. The idea of launching the class-action lawsuit isn't about the money, she said. No dollar amount has been set.
"I just want to be left alone. I just want it removed and apparently they're not doing that," she said.
Calgary attorney Clint Docken, whose firm is handling the case, said Schaeffer came to him out of "frustration." He said a similar class-action lawsuit has been launched in the United States.
Docken said Schaeffer is the only plaintiff at this point, but he expects others.
Anyway at this point I don’t care if the guilty parties continue or stop. I won’t be dropping any complaints.
I also use marijuana medically, which was an added stress thanks to Reefer Madness and ubiquitous misogyny. Too late. I will go and tell the police about it if that’s the issue.
I was reading this
And one good thing is that leaking the names of complainants who have been sexually harassed (as I was by a defence contractor in 2014, again at an office where I went for my digital id in 2016 or 2017, by some creeps on the street in 2023-I even posted about it here) is taken seriously here.
I will never not be anonymous.
I don’t want the world at large to ever associate my online self with my irl self. It’s why I find these stalkerish things so loathesome. It’s a doxing strategy and these creeps cannot win this. They picked a fight with the wrong person.
It’s 14 years, but they cannot win this. I don’t want influencers, attention seekers and gamers etc on my street.
There will be no virtual space they can encroach into with Google type declarations or the equally creepy and disturbing “indigenous” counterpart decrying “Western feminism” that is so offensive to “indigenous” creep. I am from these parts, not a “coconut”. I can tell a decent local from these predatory, parasitic creeps.
No decent person locally would do all this. They aren’t even aware and would be confused as I was.
It is an entirely creepy and corrupt collection of people and as I said, I have no use for civil litigation.
I am no fan of carceral shit. But when you use backdoors to destroy women’s rights and democracy and push the limits of decency this much, without real pushback there will be no future I can live in.
You are not supposed to be a freeloader wrt democracy or women’s rights or excuse performative bs.
So, sorry..in response to your query..I don’t know if Pokemon Go itself is a thing. But the fucking awful patterns of human behavior that Pokemon Go, Facebook, Google etc have infected the real world with are not sustainable.
And I owe EarlG, Elad, Skinner and DU a debt of gratitude for allowing me to maintain an anonymous online journal as someone who is very much not an influencer or future political or media personality but what I have feared is the increasingly endangered species-the average citizen who pushes back and against all forms of industry that mine real life including bogus entertainment and documentary things.
That’s the problem. The endless tumorigenic non industries. It’s a teaching moment! No it isn’t!
It’s a complaint a scary lady is filing.
Vamoose..
The worst part of this era is an economy of tumors budding off of tumors.
I used to viciously think “oh yeah! Another little incident for my imaginary future memoir or political career etc”
We all lose when instead of filing complaints, people exploit these things.
I have said it before because I cannot emphasize it enough. The most honest article in The Jacobin I saw on police reform acknowledged that the author is themselves part of an industry.
We need to organize against these forces without becoming a part of the problem.
These are not even bullshit jobs. They are tumors. This is why I like Lina Khan/Yasha Levine as opposed to that Cory Doctorow, Cambridge Analytica, Tristan Harris, Roger McNamee, Frances Haugen, Facebook person who wrote a memoir, Gita Gambhir parade. You can’t grift from a problem, being the victim of a problem or part of the problem.
That is what the technofascists want. No more regulation or serious disinterested and uncorrupted public sector employees like Lina Khan or Rohit Chopra, but a tumor like grift based industry of memoirs and kayfabe and pointless “games”.
It’s so bloody predictable. First you do a bunch of creepy life destroying shit and then you grift from a bogus “tell all”.
You are supposed to file serious complaints and get these things shut down and regulated not collaborate and kayfabe with the enemy. Theatre and influencing is the opposite of real pushback.
Most actual whistleblowers lead shitty lives forever.
They also need to legalize marijuana without trying this shit:
https://www.populationbalance.org/essays/eat-pray-pollute
I document this in case they try that shit Ketcham described in the Truthdig article.
I have generally found the local police here decent-both the cyber police and irl. I don’t have these dogmatic views about all police being evil etc. They are govt employees and who else is supposed to do something about these creeps? I don’t have private security like a bloody billionaire.
And nothing is sleazier than “police reform” the way billionaires like Clare Wu peddle it. A sports billionaire in police reform..can you just say sleazy and crass?
Prof David Golumbia called out the bullshit fueling peopel like Joy Buohlwimini of the sleazy, Epstein connected MIT Media Lab, who are all for invasive tech companies but dislike democracy.
Whether it is data mining tech, bogus security theatre, bogus rot like that Gita Gambhir shit, predatory entertainment industries hoping to build an ARG, defense contracting-whatever it is, they can fuck right off and stay away from my street and home.
I would never allow anything near me or my home or street from this type without IRB and copious amounts of regulation of predatory tech and entertainment industries.
See, a company making medical or recreational marijuana has a real product. These are predatory third parties and now in every aspect of real life.
Must everything be bloody spelt out?
I at least took the effort to write it relatively coherently this time.
Such a bloody waste of time. Total grifters.
I have to go work. I was looking at the creeps flooding my street wishing I could make out which of these creeps are actually engaged in this rot and what is normal nuisance traffic diverted here as they dig up the entire city, but don’t fix the streets in any decent time.
They have never seen an environmental or labor law they wouldn’t break if they could get away with it.
