Axe sponsoring contests has it’s benefits…
but bruh…
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Ahh; Welcome back to the hobby then.
I would wonder whether social media defines “popularity”. My experience is that without knowledgeable moderators; social media platforms become dominated by manufacturers creating false “posts” like: “Who loves the new XXX from YYY?”
Forums like YYE have endured for years for a reason.
My $0.02.
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well-moderated being the operative term.
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I’d like to imagine Axe has a different kind of presence in japan (where what was described above happened) that in western countries lol.
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I got my neighbor into yoyos last summer and he uses no social media at all. I’m sure there are hundreds of people just like him.
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Lots of lurkers, too. I know for a fact that the subreddit has a lot of silent followers (someone made a post asking about this awhile back and a fair few people came out of the woodwork).
I think we too easily equate visibility with popularity and forget that a lot of members of our community (and most communities, I’d wager) just don’t post. But they’re there.
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Yep, that is like me. I mostly lurk here on the forums. I don’t really have anyone in person that I know that yoyos and the pandemic has made it harder to meet others. But just know that there are more out there. I come to this forum to check in on what is going on from time to time, but rarely post.
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I’m new-ish to yoyo, and I’ve seen a lot of newbies come into the hobby just in my short time with it. I started in January 2019, which is really recent compared to some folks. Honestly, I’ve sold more string in the last month than I did in all of 2020. I watched that yoyo_Mack kid grow from 100 followers to 83k on Instagram. What I’d give for that kind of growth lol. All that to say, from where I’m sitting it doesn’t look like yoyo is dying, it seems like this hobby is booming. Especially during a pandemic when people have a little more free time on their hands. I just gave my nephews some YYF Whips this past weekend and helped them learn how to do a proper throw, they’re kids so even getting the yoyo back to the hand on a responsive yoyo is pretty difficult but they’re getting there.
I guess what I’m saying is, yoyoing isn’t a dying hobby. At least, it doesn’t have to be. There are people out there pushing it, like yoyo_mack getting tons of followers and obviously not every single one of those is a yoyo player right now but maybe they’ll pick up one when they see it at Hobby Lobby next to the model airplanes or in Walmart next to a Rubik’s Cube. Or maybe you have nephews like I do who you can share your passions with. Yoyo is a hobby that thrives on community, whether that’s in person or online. I know I wouldn’t be where I am without the community I’ve found. So if you are afraid yoyo is a dying hobby, what are you gonna do to keep it alive?
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It’s been said numerous times in the past by knowledgeable people that the number of people posting on forums and social media are a small fraction of the people actively participating in the yoyo world.
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This hobby is not declining by any stretch of the imagination.
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i’ve found in my travels that the pandemic has brought out a lot of ‘covid closet cases’… old schoolers that were bored and found their old yoyo cases in the back
of the closet while they were going stir crazy around the house…
this is a great time for them, and opportunity for all of us to learn, and get some more life breathed back into the community. i’ve met a bunch of cool cats this way…
if you just focus on ‘contests & meetups’, the community is and will be dead just waiting for it to get better. building relationships, pursuing innovative means to make the community thrive…
besides, it doesn’t have to be big judgey contests with a proclaimed winner to have fun. FSYB is thinking of moving to large-scale meet-ups with activities, performances, etc, as opposed to events geared to
solely picking winners
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I’ve told my story before, I was very active in the hobby from about 1995-2004 following drops, reading the various forums, following the competitive scene. Then life got busy, kids, career, all that stuff. I never stopped playing, I just didn’t keep up with yoyo world. In 2018 I saw a short clip of Even Nagao’s worlds routine somewhere and it blew my mind. I went and watched the whole thing on you tube and other videos I found from there and learned that instagram had a huge amount of incredible activity around yoyos. I decided it was time to buy some new yoyos, learn some new tricks and that’s when I got involved in this forum.
I’m typically a lurker, I don’t have the bandwidth to be active in social media, I dislike a lot of typical internet discourse. This forum is the one place I post more actively, in a large part because the culture and moderation here makes me want to actively participate. Plus I really prefer the old school format used here, I find most social media formats to be too disorganized and chaotic with a low signal to noise ratio. I know a handful of others who still play, but have no interest in engaging online.
The biggest difference I see between now and 20 years ago is the price, availability and variety of yoyos compared to 20 years ago. Its so much better in every way. Learning tricks pre youtube and instagram was much harder, sure you could buy tapes and dvds but that was about it. It was hard to stay inspired unless you happened to be able to meet with fellow throwers. The whole scene is far more diverse and active then I remember it being.
Would I like to see more people yoyoing? You bet. It is an amazing hobby, with so many different niches that you can focus on or dabble in. It is great for helping people learn how rewarding it can be to develop a skill which requires significant time and effort. The coolest thing is seeing our hobby expand beyond learning tricks, collecting and competing to being able to design and manufacture your own yoyo at relatively little cost. Its almost impossible to buy a truly bad yoyo, there are great options at every price point. I think the best way for most of us to help grow the hobby is to get new people started. Keep some decent yoyos around you can give away, give them to people who show interest and spend some time teaching the basics. With one exception, everyone I’ve done this with still plays some, most have gone on to purchase more, follow people on instagram and lurk here or there.
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I don’t feel Youtube is the best metric to use as the yardstick for yo-yo popularity. Youtube as with all other social media is relatively dynamic. In a pre-instagram /tik-tok world it was the only way to consume visual yoyo content (ok there was the vhs, then dvd then download era that preceded it) but now its function is not absolute. In my experience it is very hard to capture eyeballs and I know my best bet isn’t YouTube.
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I’ve been lurking here for a few weeks, figuring I might eventually sign up. Now I’ve signed up in an attempt to make you feel a little better? Did it work?
For the record, I’m also new to the hobby, other than learning a few basic tricks as a kid. Just got into it about 6 weeks ago in a pretty random way, and I’m really enjoying it.
Edit: I should add that my daughter got into it too, and we’ve since given her friend a yoyo after she expressed interest. I’m not sure if her friend will actually get into it, or even if my daughter will stick with it longer term once she get past the easy stuff (she’s doing better than I expected so far). But I feel like I will stick with it now that I can do enough of the basics to feel like I have a chance at actually learning some of the more serious tricks.
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ah, welcome aboard @faceplant !!!
carrying on…
i honestly think the yoyo hobby itself is too strictly defined by what it used to be, as opposed to what it could be. the ‘golden generation’ that grew up and carried it along are still amazing contributors, and a debt of gratitude is owed to them and will be as they continue to move the industry forward, or with it.
however there are many folks from then that are viewing from a different perspective. pushing contests on to people that have literally no interest in contests, but have been a part of the community for decades (or decades ago) and have families… there’s many folks out there… even modding folks are tooling around more again…
it takes a lot of $40 yoyos to equal the $400, $500 & $900 yoyos that move around… those people need to be attracted, catered too… whatever the case may be. but, if you’re chasing the crowd, youre on the wrong side of what’s hot
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The good thing about a small community would be that all the yoyo contests would become to crowded. And once everyone’s good at yoyoing, everybody will find it harder to make a living off of yoyos, because somebody new is going to win. And once everybody is struggling, they’ll have to find a real job, which will leave no time for yoyoing, thus no modern yoyo. sad.
Google analytics on the keyword “yoyo” might shed interesting data on this
Forgive the perhaps novice question but I’ve been out of the hobby for about 20 years until jumping back in last year. Is yoing actually that big compared to say things like TCGs and video games? I always assumed it was a pretty niche hobby but I’ll admit I dont keep up with current trends all that much
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TCGs are enormous. According to statista.com: “Revenue in the Card Games segment amounts to US$623m in 2021.”
From the same site: “Revenue in the Video Game Consoles segment amounts to US$6,936m in 2021.”
That’s just consoles, not even including games. Those numbers are insane.
By comparison, yoyo doesn’t even get its own market segment. Most yoyo companies do it out of passion for the hobby, not huge profits. I think most yoyo companies are run by hobbyists who have other jobs and just do it as a side gig. The few large companies (Duncan, Yoyofactory, etc) are still small enough that I can’t even find any financial info or their net worth online.
So yeah, I’d say yoyo is way smaller than TCGs, which in turn are way smaller than video games. Which is honestly a little surprising, since TCGs are a huge industry, but I guess that just means video games are even bigger than I assumed.
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I probably know more people who believe Tommy Wiseau is D.B. Cooper than people who own a yoyo.
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