ST. LOUIS — Bird watcher Daniel Allen and avid Pokémon GO player Jonathan Meyer could be seen silently pitying one another from a distance in Forest Park today.
“That guy over there is so sad,” said Allen, almost word-for-word matching a simultaneous inner monologue being directed back at him by Meyer. “That sorry schmuck is here in this big beautiful park full of diverse avian wildlife and his face is buried in his phone. I bet he doesn’t even know there was a rose-breasted grosbeak just a few feet away in the tree above him.”
“It’s so sad about that poor bird-obsessed freak,” Meyer thought to himself at the exact same time. “There are a dozen Pokémon gyms in this park and this guy is too busy counting all the birds flying around. There was a Mewtwo with Sunglasses right next to him and I bet he has no fucking clue what he was missing.”
Experts warn that although Pokémon GO and birdwatching have both seen a record increase in participants as people are looking for more and more activities to engage in outside during the ongoing pandemic, neither one is actually healthy for your lifestyle long-term.
“These are deeply disturbed individuals,” says clinical psychologist Tracy Anderle who has written multiple books on both birdwatchers and Pokémon GO players. “We’ve conducted extensive studies on both of these groups and there is one thing that they all have in common: they are all manic-obsessive, a personality trait shared by serial killers. If you see anyone engaging in this behavior you need to call the police immediately or you will die.”
At press time, the National Audubon Society has announced a partnership with Niantic to release a special version of Pokémon GO that just has normal birds.
