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some debunked pokemon go “tips” i’ve heard (feel free to add more you’ve seen debunked!):

olivemeister:

  • “eevee’s evolutions are determined by moveset” – demonstrably false. jury’s out on nicknames, have yet to see a case where pyro/rainer/sparky nicknames have failed when the nicknames were confirmed to have been saved by the servers
  • “the green pulse around the nearby list indicates you’re facing in the right direction” – the green pulse indicates that the nearby list has been updated – it doesn’t necessarily mean something’s changed, just that the list has essentially ‘refreshed’
  • “tapping a pokeball after missing will recover it” – this is just straight-up not the case
  • “you can hatch eggs by shaking your device/spinning your device/any sort of stationary movement” – pokemon go DOES NOT USE A PEDOMETER, the step counter is based on your GPS location moving
  • “downloading offline maps for google maps will decrease load times” – this seemed legit because it is the case for ingress, but it is not here – pokemon go does not use google maps’ API for location data.
  • “you can email nintendo with proof of disability to unlock different settings” – nintendo did not develop the game, no one would set them to be something that you have to contact the developer to unlock, and they would not require proof to change said settings
  • “the leaves indicate a pokemon is going to spawn there” – it seems to just be cosmetic, but may indicate that a pokemon will spawn somewhere soon
  • “different weather conditions affect pokemon spawns” – the one i heard the most is “storms = electric and water pokemon”, this has no basis in reality

one that’s true:

  • some pokemon do have altered spawn rates based on what time it is! clefair and the gastly line appear more frequently at night.
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god-dammit-mason:

Everyone is saying that the professor is grinding the Pokémon into candy, but consider the following:

• The professor frantically running around with assistants, inspecting hundreds of thousands of pidgeys a day, getting bitten and screeched at while they try to figure out if this pidgey has been tagged yet so they release them back to track their migration

• Panicked interns trying to scoop the ekanses back into their tank because theyre freaking out the rattatas

• Three caterpies climbed into a vent and evolved into metapods that are too far in to reach so six underpaid college students are trying to dismantle ductwork

• Theres a big door marked “KEEP OUT” because a dozen oddish evolved into a squad of Vileplumes and until they stop releasing stun spores the entire room is just off limits

• Hundreds of researchers running on red bull and determination trying to tag and examine all the Pokemon but having to turn off the machine every once in a while to the discontent of trainers who are all getting a “Sorry, the servers are currently down” message at LEAST twice a day

• “GPS not found” flashes while returning a big group and suddenly Florida has been gifted 6,000 mankeys right in the middle of Epcot

• Someone in the back room up to their waist in stale dog treats with a bunch of little stamps. They sigh deeply at how gullible Pokemon trainers are that they think these things actually do anything other than excite the Pokemon so much they evolve

• Actual science professor surrounded by chaos and interns and a budget just too small