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The Lafayette Building in Detroit
We stumbled upon something this week that has us utterly flummoxed. How, for the love of all things Squirtle, did San Francisco only register
eighth on a list of Top 10 Cities Most Interested in Pokemon Go?!
Well, millennial friends, it certainly did. By the grace of Metapod, the good folks at Internet Service Partners used
Google Trends to determine which states and cities are most obsessed with the mobile phenomenon that has led to, among many hard-to-believe stories, an
outright ban in Iran, a new provision in New York preventing
paroled sex offenders from playing the game, and the
shooting death of a man in San Francisco.
Internet Service Partners is a company that connects people with internet service providers wherever they live. It also blogs, which it did to create this
infographic about Pokemon interest around the U.S. Their metrics were quite interesting: “We used Google Trends to focus on the top 10 states most interested in Pokemon Go, and looked at the amount of millennials, the obesity rate, and physical activity levels in each state.” The game is, after all, supposed to get people outside and moving around, something Americans
aren’t normally into.
The West did well, with Oregon, Idaho, and Utah taking the top three spots. But California did not make the list, and San Francisco was only the eighth most crazed Pokemon city. It’s hard to believe that in a place where an estimated 10,000 people took part in a Pokemon crawl
recently, the best we could do is eighth. That sucks. Just look at these people who
finished eighth in American Idol. No winners there.
So which city is the most obsessed with Pokemon Go? That would be Detroit. Perhaps that’s not surprising in a city with an unemployment rate of 10.2 percent, nearly twice that of the nation as a whole. However, the Pokemon get-together there in July only attracted 1,000-plus
attendees. And although this story takes place in Arizona, at least one member of the Detroit Lions football team thinks the game is
brainwashing people.
Still, when the quarterback of your football team thinks his teammates are playing the game
too much, it’s safe to say your city is Pokemon-crazed.
