Always though that's the stupidest way to play the Pokemon Go. Maybe it made a little bit of sense in the beginning when small villages had almost no content but even than you just missing most aspects which make this game interesting. I guess that's the time we live in.
It's true that playing in-the-flesh with a crew was the best way to play, but spoofing enabled both levelling up faster (which in turn helps the "with crew" outings) and bypassing impossible restrictions like increasing number of geo-locked critters.
It does say "gotta collect 'em all" pretty clearly...
However, I still remember the wave of people coming towards me when a Gyarados spawned right near me. I had some family with me who weren't playing (and therefore didn't know what was going on) and were quite intimidated by the sight of the approaching, stampeding crowd.
It was a lot of fun to spoof my location to Central Park and actually be able to take on gyms while I lived in the sticks. Naturally I also turned off spoofing when I'd have the chance to visit a metro area.
Android tells apps if the location fix they get is spoofed, and this tool cannot fix that. I assume Niantic checks for that and has been doing so for years now, so you'd need root, plus a Play Integrity bypass, to do this.
