Pokemon Go Archives - Tempe in Motion

Lions player quits Pokemon Go, says it’s ‘some mind-control stuff’ – For The Win

August 2, 2016

By: Nina Mandell | August 2, 2016 1:04 pm

Lions guard Larry Warford joined the legions of athletes and other people obsessed with Pokemon Go this summer — but quit after a day, according to the Detroit Free-Press, because he was concerned about the control it seemed to have on people.

From the Detroit Free-Press:

“I’ll tell you why I stopped playing it,” he said Monday. “I was walking down Mill Avenue in Tempe, Ariz., pretty much on (Arizona State’s) campus. … I was walking down and literally everyone that was on their cell phone walking down that same street was playing Pokemon Go. I was looking at their screens and it was about 30, 40 people walking down Mill (Avenue).

“It was a bunch of people playing it and I was like, ‘I don’t like this.’ I deleted it because I was like, ‘This is some mind-control stuff.’ I don’t like it.”

Warford was on his way to meet friends at a restaurant when he ran into an unnamed Lions teammate on Mill Avenue. He was playing it, too.

“I was like, ‘This is bad, this is bad,’ ” Warford said. “They were playing it and I was like, ‘Nope!’ And I deleted it right there, right when I got to the restaurant. The funny thing is, the people I was eating with, they were playing it, too.”

Warford isn’t the only person who’s expressed concern about the game. Washington State coach Mike Leach was asked about it during Pac-12 media days and said that cell phones themselves were causing people to walk around like zombies. And sports arenas have opened their doors to let in Pokemon players to stop people from illegally breaking and entering while playing.