I felt like talking a little bit last night so I recorded a vlog about how I got started yo-yoing and wanted to share it with some yo-yoers. Here is the video:
In it I talk about how I got started, what my first throw was and ask how you yourself got started throwing and if you’ve ever inspired anyone to yo-yo too. Hope some of you enjoy it! 
Awesome video as always sir. Hope things are going well in the north west lol
Thank you Atombomb3r! Glad you enjoyed it! Yea so far things are going pretty good up my way, has steadily been getting colder which is awesome because I get to wear all my favorite warm clothing again and drink hot drinks and generally chill inside lol
Another awesome video! I like how you yoyo in public a lot and like to show and inspire others that find it interesting. I myself tend to yoyo in public a fair bit as well. I do this in hopes of meeting another thrower, and to get others interested in the hobby. I’ve started to bring 2 yoyos with me a while back, my advanced unresponsive 1a yoyo and a beginner responsive yoyo if someone wants to try it and maybe learn some basic stuff…
It’s kind of saddening when I hear people say they keep yoyo to themselves and if they yoyo in public, keep it to themselves and don’t really show others and almost ignore them. I honestly don’t get why people get so annoyed when someone asks you to walk the dog or do some basic stuff for them to see. It’s not like they know about the advanced stuff and unresponsive yoyos, I just simply show them, it’s not a hard thing to do. And if they ask me to walk the dog, I always do an arm grind and it works. I’ve even taught a few people from off the streets from people absolutley knowing nothing about yoyoing how to properly throw up to doing stuff like braintwister, double or nothing, and binds. I’ve even come across someone who used to yo a few years back but quit due to college, work, etc. I retaught him some tricks he knew back in the day such as the matrix and kwyjibo, and have inspired him to pursue yoyo again. That was a great day for me, just knowing I got someone back into yoyoing after quitting for a few years.
As for how I started, it all began about a year ago when I went Christmas shopping with my parents at Toys R Us and I saw a yoyo display on a shelf. I saw stuff from duncan imperials up to yomega mavericks. I at the time thought the Yomega Fireball was already expensive for a yoyo as enough. Before that I always thought yoyos were only a dollar and you could only do gravity pull, sleeper, walk the dog and the really basic stuff. I decided to get the Yomega Fireball. Right when I got home I ripped out the package, started reading the trick booklet and started to try to learn some basic tricks. I was doing basic stuff off the booklet like walk the dog, rock the baby, around the world, forward pass, etc. for a week or two before I found out about modern yoyoing.
After that I started going on the internet and looking for yoyo tricks to learn and stumbled upon Hiryouki Suzuki’s 2012 Worlds performance and was absolutely amazed, I had no idea you could do any of what he was doing. So I started to try to learn more tricks. I was really struggling to learn trapeze with my imperial. Then about a week or two after that I bought a YYF Velocity and learned trapeze fairly quickly afterwards with the wider gap. Then I started to learn some more advanced tricks off of YYE and that’s how I really started…
Great video, hope to see more!
andy569, thank you for the comment and for putting time and thought into it, I really do appreciate that! I’m glad to hear you are out and about throwing in hopes of meeting other throwers. Though rare it does happen from time to time. So far it’s happened twice for me in Boise, ID. I feel like if it can happen here it can happen anywhere.
I think the biggest reason most throwers keep yo-yoing to themselves and get annoyed with people “bother them” is because they’ve gone through a bit of ridicule from their non-yo-yoing peers over the years. I know that for the first few years I yo-yoed I was harrassed relentlessly about it, bullied, and ignored. So I decided for a while that everyone else could shove it and I would yo-yo for me only. When people asked me to walk to dog I would ignore them as if they weren’t there, simply because a handful of people who were kids and were being stupid teased me.
I had decided that everyone felt my hobby was stupid and that they didn’t understand it, which simply wasn’t true. I had a few haters tell me it was and I took the bait and believed them like a complete idiot. It took quite a few years for me to realize I had made a mistake and that the majority of people who saw me yo-yoing thought it was cool and were truly interested in talking with me and were attempting to be friendly when they asked me about my hobby or requested a trick. I had simply listened to the loud vocals of the minority that were getting pleasure out of bullying me and believed that if these people said my hobby was stupid then everyone must think that it was too.
I feel like that is what is keeping most throwers from yo-yoing in public and is what keeps them on their defenses when someone tries to talk to them about the hobby. Being that I’ve been in their shoes I completely understand their stance on not wanting to engage the public about yo-yoing, but I hope that some of them will see this video or future videos I plan to relentlessly harrass our community with that will convince them that the vocal few don’t reflect the thoughts of the many.
That’s rad that you rekindled someone’s interest in yo-yoing! And that you are patient enough to take the time to show inquisitive bystanders the basics of our hobby. When people ask me about it I do my best to show them some basics and even let them throw my “professional yo-yos” so that they can see it’s not their grandpa’s yo-yo. Sometimes they see it as offputting, other times they develop a new sense of awe in what they’ve just seen me do with it before they tried to simply make it return to their hand. Whatever the case it allows me to make a new connection with a new person and we usually get into interesting discussions about very random things. I find it fun and exciting.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and your startup story with me, I enjoyed reading it! Take care and hope to hear from you again!
-Mike