Three disoriented and frightened little green men were discovered behind a 7-Eleven in Fernwood, Ohio, last night, having been lured there by armed robbers manipulating Pokémon Go's geolocation feature. The aliens reportedly had been playing the newly released Pokémon Go augmented reality game. Their flying saucer was found nearby, stripped of its cloaking shield technology.
"The poor little fellows thought they were going to capture a Pikachu," said a Fernwood Police Department spokesperson. "Now they're stuck in Fernwood—at least until we catch the perpetrators."
In other Pokémon Go-related news, the 405 Interstate Highway in Los Angeles was shut down for nearly two hours this morning when the driver of a tractor trailer hauling crates filled with thumbtacks swerved suddenly toward on off-ramp, causing the truck to jacknife, resulting in dozens of cars getting flat tires. According to reports, the tractor trailer driver, using his smartphone, had spotted a Pokémon Go "portal" in the parking lot of an In-N-Out Burger he had just driven past. No injuries were reported.
Finally in Pokémon Go-related news, the news items you just read are completely fictitious.
What is true is that shares of Nintendo have been gaining in value since the recent release of Pokémon Go, a location-based scavenger hunt that enables smartphone users to virtually capture and battle with Nintendo's trademarked creatures.
Nintendo's sudden share jump has been bolstered by media coverage of the game's die-hard players. Much of the media coverage is related to a story about armed robbers in Missouri who used Pokémon Go "to tempt players into secluded areas where they could be easily robbed." This story appears to be true. Then there's the story about the teenage girl who says she found a dead body while engaged in the augmented reality scavenger hunt. This one seems to be true.
Then there are the reports of Pokémon Go-distracted drivers running amok and causing massive pileups. You can file these reports with the one about the aliens.
We'll likely never know if the companies behind Pokémon Go—Nintendo, the Pokémon Co. and Google spinoff Niantic—had a hand in spreading the word about the tall and tall-ish tales related to the release of the game. In any case, the release has tapped into a wellspring of media coverage. As one Reddit user wrote, "Has any new thing ever come out that wasn't immediately followed by news articles designed to scare you away from that new thing?"
Follow Steve Goldstein: @SGoldsteinAI