It’s been a while since anyone has made the classic “2020 was awful” joke, so this latest dose of meta millennial humor from Niantic has come beautifully out of left field. Despite the fact the world was on fire at the time, the revered developer of Pokemon Go managed to pull off an excellent Go Fest last year - and now the flames are finally being fanned, it’s just looking at everyone and going “... Ha! Hahaha!”
I’m a pretty casual Pokemon Goer these days, despite being excruciatingly into it back during 2016’s Pokemon Go-athon, where people who couldn’t tell the difference between a Snom and a Snorlax dropped $50 a week on microtransactions for extra egg incubators - what a weird time that was, eh?
Anyway, I still play from time to time, mostly as a habitual thing to make sure I’m always at least relatively aware of where I’m at. Even though I don’t play as often as I used to though, I still read up on everything about Pokemon Go pretty much every day - and today’s news has made me nearly wet myself from laughing. Check out the tweet below.
This is the third tweet in Niantic’s thread to announce Pokemon Go Fest 2021, so it’s buried under the good stuff like the fact that tickets have been reduced from $14.99 to just $5. Nice! That’s really cool, except for the fact that I wouldn’t be interested in these shinies even if you were paying me $5.
“Psst… that’s not all!” reads the tweet, setting all of us up for the biggest deluge of disappointment conceivable by a human brain. “What do Unown F, Whismur, Chimecho, Audino, Tympole, Throh, and Sawk have in common?”
“They’re all rubbish!” I shout at my phone. “Into the sea with Sawk! Off to the trash with Throh! Away to the waste with Whismur!”
“Answer,” Niantic responds, authoritatively and with the air of someone who is about to break their bones laughing at you. “Their Shiny forms will be making their Pokémon GO debut during #PokemonGOFest2021! *sparkles emoji*.”
In case you’re wondering, I manually typed that sparkles emoji bit, it’s not just a bad copy/paste. I think it’s essential to articulating the sheer genius of Niantic’s humor here, the fact that the renowned Pokemon Go dev is capable of having a laugh every now and then, just like us real human eejits. Because let’s be reasonable here, right - these are some of the worst Pokemon ever designed. Unown F looks like the side profile of a duck drawn by a three-year-old. Whismur is a Pokemon I forgot existed until this morning. Chimecho is a rag with a ghost bell on its head. Audino is OK, actually, but still. Tympole is Poliwag except with ugly apostrophe eyebrows and very-not-vogue headphones for ears. Sawk and Throh are equally terrifying human monstrosities who look like the inside and outside of Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama, respectively, except now they’re jacked and, therefore, even scarier.
I just think it’s really funny that Niantic would joke like this. I’m always up for a laugh, so I appreciate when people are willing to say something silly to put everyone in good humor.
What’s that? It’s not a joke? Nah, bud, it is. Seriously. It has to be. It’s not? Really? Oh. Oh, right. Yeah, I know, I was only messing. Haha. No you’re going redder than a Charizard. Shut up.