Do you wanna catch ’em all, but get distracted by things like work and family? Craigslist can help.
Ivy St. Ive, the editor in chief of Brooklyn-based Silica magazine, placed an ad on the site today offering her services as a “professional Pokémon Go trainer.” The NYU graduate promises to “help YOU become the very best” for $20 an hour.
The partnership begins when you give St. Ive the password to your Pokémon Go account.
“Hopefully you weren’t a total noob and used a fake gmail address when you signed up for this app because the surveillance is real,” she writes.
St. Ive will then walk around the city for one to four hours and capture every creature she comes across, focusing on specific types (fire,
To avoid working with shady characters, St. Ive confirms the identity of each person she works with before agreeing to help them.
“Remember: I’m a journalist and very good at this,” she writes.
She also insists that the virtual collaboration begins with an in person consultation.
“No creepy stuff,” St. Ive warns. “I know how to defend myself and will not take any bullshit from you.”
This is not the first time St. Ive, a level 15 trainer, has gotten press for her Pokémon prowess—she was featured in a Vice article last year showing off her tattoo of Golbat.
Even though it’s been out for less than a week, Pokémon Go is already more popular than Snapchat, Twitter and Tinder—so it’s no surprise that St. Ive has already been approached by several dozen potential clients.
St. Ive told the Observer that she initially posted the ad this morning as a joke, because “I’m a freelance journalist, so the struggle is real.”
“I’m just a girl who loves Pokémon and thought ‘What if I could get paid for all this time I’m sinking into this game?'” she told the Observer in an email.
The app’s popularity is not a surprise to St. Ive, however.
“My generation grew up with Pokémon, and the nostalgia factor of getting to relive our childhood fantasies in a virtual reality app is essentially what dreams are made of,” she said.
In the end, St. Ive said the social aspect of the game was more important than anything else.
“I have made random friends with so many people this week and seen so many new parts of the city that I would not have otherwise gone out and explored if it weren’t for this game,” she said.
