Augmented Reality

Pokémon GO is not only a fiendish Western conspiracy designed to weaken Mother Russia; it will surely sap the delicate moral fibre of young Russians …

Pokémon GO has not yet been officially released in Russia, but that hasn’t stopped many Russian gamers downloading the app, and rushing all over the country, hunting down those pesky characters. And understandably this is deeply worrying for the guardians of our public morality, and indeed for the government itself, for there is no telling where this might lead.

The St Petersburg City Orthodox Cossack Association Irbis has suggested that, “Perhaps those playing the game are unwittingly working for the CIA.” And this all makes sense – every Russian knows that the CIA is behind everything that ever happens anywhere in Russia.

The Cossacks are worried that our terribly vulnerable young people are completely engrossed in the game and distracted from real life. “We need to drag people out of the virtual world; otherwise it all smacks of Satanism. It’s as addictive as a drug so the players are losing years of their life instead of doing something more useful and developing life skills,” they say. And it’s absolutely true that you need lots of skill to make a decent life in Russia.

Worryingly, according to the Cossacks, the gamesters are so obsessed with the Pokémons that they are starting to ignore the rights of others. In their search for monsters, they feel free to barge into churches or cemeteries, for instance, offending both believers and those grieving for their loved ones. It’s like playing ball in a courtyard – the children are doing no one any harm, but it’s a different matter if they kick the ball into someone’s window. And this sense of individual empowerment, this acceptance of others different from ourselves, this understanding, if you like, of what it means to build a civil society, one that can have a voice in how our country is run –  well, the Cossacks are certainly the ones to lead the way.

For the Cossacks, Pokémon GO is just too American. Why couldn’t it be Russian programmers who come up with a game that appeals to millions of people across the world? It’s high time we came up with our own, Russian, home-produced games, and it’d be better if these were of a patriotic nature.

And what if Pokémon GO turns out to be a spy game? The players have the cameras on their phones turned on, while they are walking around the streets, into buildings, an office, for instance, where there could be top secret documents. Just imagine, foreign intelligence services could be using access to the mobile devices to look for information they need, using video or audio recordings. “Where are the apps developed? In the USA. Which means that the CIA could well be involved,” say the Cossacks. You see: the CIA is everywhere.

But relax; if you’re worried about being taken for a CIA spy, there are all sorts of helpful information for our Pokémon addicts, to keep them out of trouble. Sputnik News has come up with a 10 Places in Russia Where You Shouldn’t Really Play Pokemon. 

But what if our young people don’t heed these warnings, and just want to be part of a worldwide craze? What if they think that it’s just a game?

Andrei Polyakov, chief of the Cossack Association, says that, “the government should intervene and compel Pokémon GO to register, imposing restrictions and rules on the foreigners to protect the interests of our country and our culture. The whole affair should be checked out, including the question of what happens to the money paid by the players. Until this has been done, the game should be banned.” And where money is involved, of course our authorities want to know about it. What if all those PokéCoins gamers are buying are not actually going to Nintendo, as the shareholders think, but secretly being transferred to the CIA?

Everybody in authority in Russia seems to be against the Pokémons. Frantz Klintsevich, first deputy secretary of the Russian Federation Council’s defence committee, says that Pokémon GO should be banned in Russia because it is having a deleterious effect on the nation’s spirituality. “Is it that the devil has arrived in our society via this game and is trying to destroy us spiritually from the inside? The feeling is that the game has been wished on us from outside our country by people who understand very well that after a year or two the effects will be irreversible.” This is a terrible thought: the idea that dark forces – foreign, of course, they have to be foreign – forces we don’t understand, are taking control of our young people who might be irretrievably lost to society, not capable of contributing anything at all. No, this really doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?

But we are fighting back, comrades, all is not lost! The Moscow mayor’s office has announced that their IT department has developed an app for tourists just like that foreign Pokémon GO game.

The Pokémon clones will be launched in August. Users will be able to move round the city, just like Pokémon gamers, but they will be looking for digital look-alikes of famous Russian people: Viktor Tsoi [leader of the 90s post-punk band Kino], Peter the Great, Yury Gagarin, Ivan the Terrible, Alexander Pushkin, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and, this we don’t quite understand, Napoleon Bonaparte, who we think was French, but he was probably working for the CIA; and they’re everywhere.

Now that’s more like it. That will stop the foreigners poking their noses in our business. Russia for the Russians! Down with the Pokémons!