Being a Better Team GO Rocket Leader

While I’m a long, long way off from getting a gold Team GO Rocket medal for defeating 1,000 grunts, I managed to get the silver medal in record time and generally have no issue defeating these grunts, even if they throw a curve ball at me with a random Gyarados or Dragonite. Mostly because of Ty, my Stone Edge Tyranitar, because he’s so strong. Sure, I don’t have the higher level Purifier badge because stardust is expensive, but I beat almost all Team GO Rocket Pokestops on the first attempt.

Sure, Team GO Rocket are trying. They even seem to have something planned, and are using new Pokemon more regularly. They’re at least using less Zubats. But they are still failing most fights.

And after every fight, I get a message from the defeated grunt. Most of the time it’s just shock and disgust, but one of the rarer ones is this message:

And you know what? They’re fucking right! I’d be an amazing Team GO Rocket Leader! Team GO Rocket are a mess who don’t seem to have gotten anything done. I mean, the most effective tactic they have is borrowing the password for the official Pokemon GO Twitter page and throwing a handful of insults around. Since then, all they’ve done is steal some Pokestops.

But stealing items from Pokestops isn’t really that efficient. In fact, it’s utterly stupid. Assuming the best case scenario where you get about 5-6 Pokeballs from a Pokestop, which can only be spun every 5 minutes, and Team GO Rocket only ever control a Pokestop for 30 minutes at most. So you get approximately 20-30 Pokeballs every 30 minutes, which, according to the Shop in Pokemon GO… is about $1. Maybe $2 if you’re lucky. And that’s assuming you ONLY get Pokeballs. If you get berries, particularly Nanabs, they have almost no sell-back value whatsoever. Granted, Team GO Rocket are hitting a multitude of Pokestops at a time, but there are about 25 visible Pokestops when I’m at town hall and at most one Pokestop will be under Team GO Rocket’s control at any time.

This is no way to make money. This is in fact the stupidest way to make money. And not even potentially the safest, since Team GO Rocket grunts are constantly being attacked.

Nope, if I were a Team GO Rocket Leader, I’d be doing everything I can to make as much money as possible. And the first way to do that would be to attack Gyms, not Pokestops, because they actually give Pokecoins, which have more real world value. But why attack those when I could gave Team GO Rocket minions stealing from… raids? After all, there are plenty of people who manage to not catch a Pokemon after a raid, so why not steal those and extort Trainers with them? People will pay good money for another chance at catching a powerful Pokemon, so why are we not taking advantage of that?

That also means NOT FUCKING ABANDONING POWERFUL POKEMON. I don’t care about those dumb Zubats, but WHY THE HELL ARE WE ABANDONING MONSTERS LIKE CHARMANDER, BULBASAUR, SQUIRTLE AND EVEN LARVITAR?

Seriously, Larvitar alone is insanely powerful, and some of these grunts are ABANDONING THEM! I would not tolerate this. Yes, we are exploiting Pokemon to make money, but we are LOSING money by abandoning them to Trainers and Professor Willow!

On top of that, I’d be running a better social media campaign. There’s actually two paths I could take, and the first is to have no social media at all, because I’m running an evil organization and I don’t need stupid kids running around ruining that. On the other hand, I could take the “friendly corporation” route. While most people will roll their eyes at such a thing, it’s worked for, well, pretty much every corporation. Team GO Rocket is, after all, an equal opportunities employer, you just have to be skilled with handling Pokemon and willing to accept that Pokemon are just tools to be used and oppressed, the same way rich people already use poor people as tools and slaves. If one can get even a little bit of sympathy from the masses, that is a step in the right direction, and happily accepting new workers, regardless of race, gender or orientation is a great way to go about that.

I’d also lesson the rules on uniforms and hair styles. You don’t need pink hair and a massive R on your chest to work for us.

The last thing I would do is change Team GO Rocket’s name to Team Rocket GO! because that just rolls off the tongue so much nicer. But it also has a much more motivational feel to it, which should inspire my minions to work harder.

After all, you always need motivated minions to do your bidding…