Finally. I had someone sit down and explain to me—on the job, mind you—how this little app of horrors works. Then they showed me how to play.
Amazing. They might as well have called it “Budding Serial Killer Go”. Here’s the entire game as near as I can tell and as best as she could describe it:
You wander around in a digital playground that has essentially reduced the outside world to a Wimbledon grass version of Waterworld. Every single building on the face of the globe has been flattened into a two-dimensional footprint that is not even to scale, and every once in a while you stumble on some Pokemon. Now what?
You take a pokeball or whatever the fuck it is that I am certainly not going to waste any time checking to see if I spelled it right, and start beaning the damned things in the head with it. Just in case this has eluded you, a Pokemon is an imaginary little animal with a soul and little furry paws and shit. Now the first whack usually doesn’t “capture” the thing in what is essentially a 19th century zoo exhibit/genie lamp, so you have to keep bludgeoning it until it is either knocked cold or horribly crippled to the point that it can’t resist your sadistic will anymore.
You then go looking for a dogfighting ring. These are called “gyms”, but what they really are are otherwise innocuous "buildings" that host Pokemon fights for entertainment and bragging rights. Much like serial rapists who keep girls chained in their basements so as to sodomize and torture them several times a day, most of the neighbors would have never suspected this was going on in their own neighborhood because people who play Pokemon Go tend to be very quiet and keep to themselves.
To make this false salt flat of a universe even more charming, you never have to feed, walk, pet or even tend to the wounds of your little death harem. And it goes on forever. There is no end to the suffering and misery these innocent little Care Bears and Pound Puppies endure, and even if they manage to escape it by dying they are sent right back into the game to relive the pure hell over and over and over again.
Seriously. Be a good parent and go get your five-year-old a treadmill and a copy of Grand Theft Auto V so they can someday become responsible, loving model citizens.