As I take the penultimate turn on my drive home from work, I pass a graveyard. Like most graveyards, it tends to be vacant of people or have only a sole car visible. Occasionally, I will see one, maybe two people standing near one of the graves. At least that used to be the case. For approximately the last week, as I passed that same graveyard, I have seen several cars and groups of people walking around. This obviously peaked my interest but never enough to make me think about it for more than a couple minutes. Today, I decided to see what was happening.
Turning into the parking lot, I felt rather uncomfortable going into a graveyard without the intention of visiting a relative or friend's resting place. I parked near five other cars, got out of the car and immediately knew what everyone was doing. They were playing Pokémon Go.
I followed the dirt and pebble path that went through the "memorial gardens" (as the sign read), every single person there had a phone held to their face and spoke of Oddishes, Bellsprouts, and Caterpies. I made my way to the rear of the graveyard and witnessed a group of roughly fifteen to twenty of people taking up the entire walkway with five or six overflowing into the grass. At first, I thought this group may have been there for a funeral and wondered what they thought of the situation. I was wrong. As I approached them, I noticed that they all too had their phones out. Among the group were two people that had set up lawn chairs so they could sit down as they caught pieces of code in people's eternal resting place.
I worked my way around this group, kept walking for a bit, looked out beyond the other Pokémon hunters and then went back the way I came. When I passed this large group again, I noticed that one of the men with them was standing on a grave marker. I was going to say something, but he had moved to another part of the graveyard before I reached him.
No more than two minutes after getting into my car, I was entering my apartment building. I wasn't entirely sure what to think of what I had seen. Was it disrespectful to explore a graveyard to play a video game? I sure thought so, it was at least disrespectful to stand on a grave marker while doing it. However, there were at least fifty people in that graveyard that thought it was perfectly fine. Kids, adults, parents, families, college students, and more didn't even seem to bat an eye as they trained their Goldeens in a place where scores of people said goodbye to their loved ones. What does it say when an app makes people forget the sanctity of a cemetery?
I then thought of how the people in the graveyard were doing more than just playing a game. They were meeting new people, getting exercise, and taking in moments of fresh air in between Poké Balls. This made me think of the positive things this cultural phenomenon was doing, it took something (video games) that are usually regarded as something driving people apart and made it into something that brought people together, at least a little. However, it is still not the best thing to do in a graveyard.
