Transcript
WEBVTT
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My name is David Hernandez, and you're listening to As the Pokeball Turns.
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Welcome to As the Pokeball Turns, where the stories are real and people still play this game.
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One of Niantic core values is exploration.
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It's the idea of visiting a place, whether familiar or brand new.
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it could be a favorite destination, which makes a community unique, or a place that tells a story through its history or experiencing a new culture.
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For others, it might be going to a brand new place, traveling to a place that is unfamiliar.
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Regardless of how one engages with exploration, the idea of stepping outside one's own inner circle is consistent and is what drives my guest to interact with both Pokemon Go and the Wayfarer system.
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My guest is the writer for Pokemon Go Hub and the new co host of the Wavespotters podcast.
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From Canada, here is his origin story into the world of Pokemon Go.
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This is Professor Glaw.
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Today, I'm joined by a writer for GoHub and the new co host for the Wayspotters podcast, Professor Glaw.
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Glaw, welcome to the show.
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Thank you for having me.
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I'm glad to be here.
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Definitely.
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And you had some pretty big shoes to fill in for when you first started the podcast or when you joined the Wayspotters podcast.
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I did.
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I did.
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I had to take over for Lachlan, and he did a really, really good job when he was on the show with Jamal, so I was kind of nervous when I first took over.
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Seems to be going well.
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you've done a lot since.
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y'all started doing video.
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You started doing shorts, we're six months since your first debut.
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Has it lived up to what maybe you expected or envisioned when you joined the show?
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I think so.
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we were on the precipice of kind of big, big things, right?
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And Lachlan and Jamal did some great things.
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They had some great conversations with Niantic, we started doing the video, and it's just grown the podcast so much.
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Started adding new topics and new sections to the show and it was crazy how many people came up to us and recognized us from watching the videos.
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it blew me and Jamal away.
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Did they say like, Oh, you're the Wayspotters guys or something like that?
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Yeah, there was a couple, there was one time when I was, me and Jamal split up at one point.
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I went to go take some pictures of some stuff for my, for my daughter and someone walked up and they first noticed I was wearing a Wayfarer shirt.
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And they pointed out, they were like, Hey, where'd you get that shirt?
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And then they looked up and they were like, Hey, you're Chris from Wayspotters.
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I've seen you on YouTube.
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I literally stared at them for probably five or six seconds, not knowing what to say.
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It was weird.
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It's a very humbling experience or very awkward cause on one hand you're a podcaster, but then the other hand, it's like, these people recognize you and especially since you guys are on video on YouTube.
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YouTube's where a lot of people like to consume their content, Did you sign any autographs?
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I signed a couple of autographs, I did.
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Oh, wow.
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Dang.
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Famous right here.
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yeah, it was crazy.
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And it's, I think YouTube lends itself well to Wayspotters because Wayfarer is such a visual medium.
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A lot of people, they want to see what we're talking about and see the kind of things that we're putting up on the screen, while we're describing it, we try very, very hard to describe it for our audio only audience, and our audio only will never go away.
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So we're just trying to capture a separate audience and have a medium where we put the shorts out too, so that if you're listening to the audio version, you can go and look at the short and spend a minute and see what we were talking about.
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Right?
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So it just helps people visualize what we're talking about.
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What got you into Wayfarer to begin with?
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Wayfarer, I started Wayfarer in 2019 when it dropped for Pogo.
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I didn't play Ingress too much, so I wasn't near enough, high enough level and when it dropped for Pogo, the area that I was living in, I was living in Plattsburgh, New York at the time.
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they had basically nothing, so it was kind of very selfish for me.
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I wanted places where I could go grind.
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So the first thing I did was tricked out the park, the big park that they had there and put in, I think it's got three gyms now and 15 or 16 pokestops.
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So it's like the spot to go for community day and for raid days So that's what kind of got me started.
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What was it like for you to be able to create Pokestops for an area or community that didn't have any before?
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It was pretty cool.
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there wasn't a lot of people who knew what was going on, there was a lot of people in Plattsburgh that were like, Oh, we can make PokéStops now and they were just like, Ah, this is too intimidating.
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I don't want to.
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So it was me, Tristan, and Kirsten.
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We're like the three people who were taking over and making everything and it was really cool to hear, to see people pop up in the chat in the morning, if when something synced and popped up, like, Oh, there's a new gym over here.
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Oh, there's three or four new Pokestops over here.
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I got to sit back and watch the whole community get so excited about new places to go play.
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It was really, really cool, and it got me hooked.
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I was hooked ever since then.
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Did you have a lot of people who played Pokemon Go in that area, in spite of it not having a plentiful number of stops?
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There was about a hundred people in the chat.
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the Facebook chat was almost always maxed out.
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So yeah, there was a good healthy community there.
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There still is.
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Now, was that where you first started playing Pokemon GO or was it a different place?
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no, I first, so I've moved around a lot.
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I started playing Pokemon Go actually where I'm living now, in 2016 when it first came out.
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Like, I was day two, I was playing Pokemon Go, I had to, because I lived in Canada at the time, I had to download the APK and sideload it onto my phone, sorry Niantic, because they hadn't released it here yet, and I was like, no, I need to get it on this,
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It's like they should release it sooner!
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They should have, right?
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And I understand they had to slow roll it out because they had massive server issues back then, but I was like, yeah, I don't care.
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I want to play.
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So what was it like for you to play the first couple of days when it first came out?
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It was pretty cool.
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There was about five or six of us in the area that figured out how to download it and play it.
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And we were walking around and catching Pokemon and people were looking at us weird.
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And then it when they finally officially released it.
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everyone up here was playing, it was just, you couldn't walk 10 feet without bumping into somebody who was looking at their phone trying to catch something.
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it was nice for those first few days when it was just...
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A small group of us and they had a pretty healthy ingress community here back then.
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So there was lots of stops.
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I remember those moments felt the game felt more innocent, as before we cared about Shinies or cared about IVs and all that.
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It's just, we were just excited for Pokemon to be around.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah.
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And it was CP was the big thing back then because we didn't know about IVs and all that, so it was just like, oh, I got a bigger 1 show it off, throw it on the Facebook chat or whatever.
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Where would you and your friends go to play Pokemon Go in those days?
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we went down to the park at the lake.
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there's a big, very long, walkway that goes right along the beach.
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And it's a nice straight line, there's lots of trees, it's very shaded there.
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So that's the best place to play in the area.
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there's a spot in Ajax that has three gyms You can hit from one spot.
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So that was a big place to go to.
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Now are those places still the places people go to for like, say a community day or for raid days and stuff like that?
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Yes, absolutely.
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the park here in Oshawa is Full of people playing community day every month or like a couple of times a month, it's great.
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I, that's where I created my first route too.
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Really?
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So it'd be around that place?
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Yeah, it goes from one end of the walkway down to the other.
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So that's like the, you start at one end and then you go down and then you just go back and forth down that path.
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That's where I created the route because I got early access to it.
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That's the grind spot for everybody on community day.
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Before Pokemon Go, did you have any experience with Pokemon?
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I actually started playing Pokemon when it first came out when I was a kid I had Pokemon Red for Game Boy way back when.
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So I've been playing Pokemon for a while.
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I got out of it for a few years.
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I think I played Gen 1, Maybe I played Gen 3 and then I didn't play anything until...
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Ultra Sun, Ultra Moon.
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So there's a big gap where I didn't play anything.
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But I started having kids, and they started getting big into Pokemon, and then I'd make fun of them for knowing every single Pokemon name, but not the names of their friends.
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And then they got Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, and there was like the Ultra Room, so I'm like, well, this is kind of cool, so I took the DS and I started playing again, and that's when I got back into
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I gotcha.
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And I believe Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon came around the same time as Pokemon Go as well, right?
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It was very similar timing, yes.
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so that's originally the reason that I wanted to play Pogo, was because I looked at it as something that I could play with my kids.
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Do you and your kids still play?
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I do, my kids do not.
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Oh, that's unfortunate.
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You get back into it.
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Yeah.
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I'm gonna try and get the little ones into it.
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Every time I catch a shiny, I let them, like a unique shiny, I let them pick the name.
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Some of the names they come up with are hilarious.
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Can you share some of the names that you've actually named some of your Pokemon?
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Yeah.
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Let me pull it up.
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Keep in mind that they are 10.
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Of course, of course.
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I'm not expecting any I'm not expecting a sophisticated name here.
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I'm just very curious.
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It sounds very cute.
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Let me pull it up here.
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they named one of my snore, my shiny Snorlax, buffet.
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Okay.
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They named one of my shiny Skip Loom Skippy.
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My shiny Sylveon is named Sparkles.
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They named my shiny, Meganium Twinsies because I played that community day with my other son and he caught the exact same Pokémon as shiny.
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Oh, wow.
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So y'all both have the same shiny?
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yeah, both have the exact same one, yeah.
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They named my...
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one of my shiny Magikarps, they named it Goldie and now it's evolved into a Gyarados, so I have a bred Gyarados named Goldie.
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Oh, here's a good one.
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my shiny Sunflora is named Kenflower
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Kenflower?
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Because when my son named that one, he was playing, Street Fighter.
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Oh, okay.
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he named it after his favorite character in Street Fighter, Ken.
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That's awesome, man.
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my shiny red ice is Snowman Icy.
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Snowman.
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my Shiny Lopunny is Love Bunny.
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My daughter named that one, but it's got no e so it's Love Bunny.
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It's love, but, so it's L o v B u N Y.
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okay.
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Awesome.
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Love, love bunny.
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Oh my gosh.
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I was thinking it was gonna be L U V.
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No.
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Oh, yeah.
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No, she, uh, no, she got that one, right?
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my shiny Scyther is named Seth for some reason.
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Oh, cool, man.
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Thanks for sharing some of those names.
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Yeah, no worries.
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So do you have a favorite Pokemon at all?
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Snorlax is my favorite Pokemon.
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Snorlax has been my favorite Pokemon since gen 1.
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Really?
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Just, any particular reason why?
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he's big fat and lazy and there are, that's, I, one of my favorite things to do is just lounge around and be lazy and eat snacks, so.
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I
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It really resonated with me.
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as a parent, I hear sleeping's not too common,
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Yeah, my kids are older now, like my youngest are ten, so it's not so bad.
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My wife lets me sleep in every day because I work till midnight every day, so it's not so bad.
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What do you think of the new sleep Snorlax with the hat?
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I think it's pretty cool.
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It's really cute.
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I really wanted a shiny one, but I didn't manage to get one, so...
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Oh man, nobody was able to hook you up to GoFest?
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No, I couldn't find anybody that had an extra to trade away.
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Everybody I asked, were just like, No, I've only got the one and I want to keep it.
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And I'm like, I hate you! Give it to me!
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So obviously Wayfarer comes out in 2019.
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Before that, like, how do you play Pokemon Go?
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what's your...
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Way to play?
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I'm not what you would call like a hardcore grinder.
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I play a couple hours every day.
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when I'm at home, I'll open the game once in a while and catch what's here.
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I'm lucky right now I have a gym that I can catch from my house.
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I get my coins pretty much every day.
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I go out once in a while, if I'm going out for a walk, I'll go out for a stroll, I'll play.
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I play a little bit when I'm at work and then I'll try and play every single community day, like the whole time.
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I'm not even level 50 yet.
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I don't PvP much at all.
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I got to level 20 once just to prove to myself that I could do it.
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When the Sylph Tournaments first come out.
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I was big into it then because we had just enough people to run the tournaments so I had to participate because I was one of the community leaders.
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So I was into it then I did decently, but like I was never, I never won a tournament and I never really got very good at it.
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So it's just one of those things that I do for the stardust when I can, but oftentimes I do, I forget to do all my battles every day.
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So what was your first Niantic Live event?
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Ooh, my first Niantic five I found, I think was.
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GO Fest 2019 in Chicago.
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it was overwhelming and very exciting for the first time.
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I was living in Cornwall at the time, so a couple of us decided that we were going to go and we drove down.
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We got an Airbnb and we stayed like in Chicago.
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So it wasn't so bad.
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We took a cab out to the park.
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And then I just remember walking into the parks for the first time and just seeing like a thousand people ready to play Pokemon go.
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And I was like, this is super cool.
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And they have an inflatable Pokemon and whole habitats where they had stuff set up and it was really cool, super cool.
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And I had met so many good people that weekend that it was just amazing.
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And I swore to myself that I would never miss another one again, and then COVID hit.
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Hey, I mean, well, you only missed one, that was Seattle.
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Otherwise,
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Yeah, I didn't get a chance get up to Seattle, yeah, but it was a really good experience.
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I still talk to people that I met from GoFest in Chicago.
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would it be just random people you meet along the street or just playing the game, or was it people that you met prior to?
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no, it was just a couple people that I met in the park that we just sat and had a really good chat.
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I added them on, on Facebook before I parted ways.
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Oh, that's awesome,
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So it's, yeah, that's the great thing about Pokemon Go is it brings people together on a global level.
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And I was going to say, you probably have a good experience with that because you said you moved around a lot, right?
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I have, I've lived in five different cities in my life.
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It's just since Pogo was released.
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So I'm in a couple of discords for several different cities at this point, and I have friends all over.