I agree with you on @Roy_Dodge! He gives his opinions on yoyos after throwing them for several weeks. I rarely watch yoyo reviews and when I do it’s just for entertainment. If it’s because I want to buy a yoyo, I just want to see the see the yoyo in action. Just because a reviewer likes a yoyo does not mean I will personally care for it. It’s all opinions. Even if a reviewer says a yoyo is awesome, I can tell if they are not that enthusiastic about it.
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I appreciate the kind words and votes of confidence, @ChrisFrancz @Deadboots and @BadWolfeCo. I will admit that reviews are tricky because the quality is generally there. It’s usually a bunch of nitpicking, often based on individual preferences.
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Thank you!
Actually, I agree with you. Critical opinions don’t necessitate less positivity and we definitely shouldn’t be viewing such opinions as a negative thing. It is 100% possible to have critical reviews without decreasing the overall positive energy of the community, which should be the goal. I just find that at this point in time, the community is quite a ways off where we need to be in order to achieve such a thing. In the years I’ve been here, there have been quite a few threads (especially those controversial ones, ahem unpopular opinions) that have devolved into barbaric verbal fights between some people, or just one party raining expletives and personal attacks on the other party while that other party tries to keep the discussion civil. It has gotten so bad that some of these threads are not only cleaned up (posts being deleted, as you have seen in the bangarang thread) but are also locked indefinitely to prevent any further descent into degeneracy (ahem unpopular opinions again). The road to reach that goal is going to be a long and arduous one, which is why I chose to present a dichotomy between positivity and critical opinions. As of now, it is nearly a dichotomy given the current state of the community, where negative opinions are occasionally met with a hostile or passive-aggressive response. But if we as a community can take your advice and mature in how we handle criticism and negative opinions, we can definitely uphold the positive energy of the community while having critical opinions, and the dichotomy is no more, which would be ideal. The biggest hurdle to overcome is simply getting everyone to well, take your advice and apply it. It’s a hurdle I don’t see us overcoming in the near future, but hopefully, we’ll eventually reach there.
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I just wanna throw something in here. It’s true I don’t like to make a negative review. Even if the yo-yo is bad, it’s hard not to come off as a total rear end when criticizing a product that someone worked really hard on.
I mostly review the yoyos I like, or have mostly good things to say about. It’s pretty simple. That way, I can still maintain my integrity as a reviewer (which I take very seriously), while not being mean to manufacturers.
You will notice that I have not reviewed every Sengoku YoYo. This is because I don’t like all of them to the same degree. Am I going to tell you every single yo-yo Sengoku has made is my favorite ever? Of course not. But I do like most of them a great deal. This is not meant to present any company in an unfairly good light either. I want to make it clear that I do not make reviews to say anything about a company as a whole. All I do is discuss how one yo-yo plays to the best of my abilities.
But I can 100% guarantee that I do my best to accurately represent my thoughts when I make a review.
When I make reviews, I am not there to pass judgement on a company as a whole. I am there to present my thoughts on one yo-yo, as someone who (hopefully) has some idea of what they’re talking about.
At the end of the day, that’s it.
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This is me exactly. I’ve got a small group of yoyo buddies, and we all have very similar tastes, or at least know about the others tastes to where if we’re looking for something we message each other and talk about it. I don’t watch review videos at all, they are not important to me and I can’t think of a single thing that I’d benefit from watching them 
I know what I like and I know enough people that I’ll talk to if I’m interested in an opinion prior to purchase.
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Saying “this is a good yoyo” is not a review, in fact I don’t think the majority of yoyo reviewers should even call what they do reviews.
A review is a critical evaluation of something. If literally every single “review” you put out is just repetitive praise then you are bringing absolutely nothing to the table. Just call all those videos something like… yoyo compliments… yoyos I like… it’s a great yoyo, every time, guaranteed, please like and follow.
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Brutally honest! But I have to agree in most cases.
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Shouldn’t this thread be merged with the several other threads that are about People Who Do Not Watch Yoyo Reviews Complaining About Yoyo Reviews? “Review” is just a generic umbrella term that means “some nerd talking about a yoyo.” If you enjoy the way the person presents and chats about a yoyo, watch their videos. If not, don’t watch. No harm done either way.
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sure, i agree, but
Are yoyo reviews contentless and uninformed because no one has managed to make a good one, or becase yoyo reviews as a whole are and will always be flawed and doomed to never be any better?
I ask this because almost every single passionate negative opinion about reviews seems to boil down to “yoyo review useless, me don’t consume yoyo review, yoyo reviewers wasting time” and thats it. I almost never see the argument of “lets make better reviews” being mentioned, which is a pretty reductive view in my opinion.
It doesnt amount to anything, and yet almost everyone asks about an opinion about a yoyo they are looking to get. It’s not like reviewers are handing out reviews to a completely uninterested audience.
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Honestly, it’s neither of those. Yoyo reviews are not contentless, they have content, otherwise no one will be watching reviews. Neither are reviews uninformed, each reviewer has his own view on what is lacking in terms of yoyo reviews and strives to patch the hole (I assume) by doing reviews of his own. It’s just that the content inside yoyo reviews is still not very useful for making purchasing decisions for yoyos. By the way, I’m mostly talking about video reviews (though some points do apply to written reviews as well), which seems to be the focus of this thread. Next, yoyo reviews will always be flawed, yes, since we are human and aren’t perfect anyway. But, yoyo reviews are not doomed to be terrible forever. In fact, there has been a marked shift in the usefulness of reviews from the past to present. Now, there are more reviewers reviewing yoyos and these newer reviewers are making reviews that are slightly more valuable in making purchasing decisions, but there is still a long way to go before reviews can be used as the basis for buying a yoyo (basically very valuable for making purchasing decisions).
Not sure if this one includes my post as well, because I have laid out what needs to be done to make better reviews. I myself have tried to make written reviews of my own that are based on the principles mentioned in my post and I think I have managed to do decently. My reviews are pretty subjective and have a decent amount of content about how the yoyo plays on the string and how the specs of the yoyo result in its play on the string, which I think is the most valuable information that people looking to buy a yoyo can have, since yoyo purchases are made based on preferences.
I don’t think reviews don’t amount to anything, but they just provide too little value to really be useful in making a purchasing decision. I find myself going through all the review videos of 1 particular yoyo I’m looking to buy, skip to the part about how the yoyo plays, which is usually only about 10 seconds long and I’m still not very sure how the yoyo plays on the string. So instead, I ask people on the forums for their opinions on how the yoyo plays on the string and that yields much, much better results and I know what to expect when I play with the yoyo after hearing everyone’s opinion.
This is exactly the reason why we are even having such a discussion. If nobody cared or were interested in reviews, we wouldn’t bother talking about the current state of yoyo reviews.
This is assuming that yoyo reviews are done to inform and influence yoyo purchasing decisions, if the aim of yoyo reviews is something else, like entertainment or just sharing of personal experiences, then I think yoyo reviews have served their purpose and are valuable in those ways.
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I think I agree with you. People who want to watch these videos watch them and the people who don’t, don’t. I only watch a couple of yoyo channels on youtube and most of what they say jives with what a lot of people on this forum say with the written word. I believe the reviewers I enjoy watching are passionate and honest and doing the best they possibly can. There is the option to let the reviewer know what they can do to make their videos better by commenting. It just seems that there’s a whole lot of nitpicking going on here. Maybe everyone who is complaining about how bad yoyo reviews are should start making their own yoyo review videos. Haha, like that will ever happen.
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Let history note that @EOS44 and I agreed on something on this 24th of November, 2021 AD.
A momentous occasion which will almost surely never be repeated.
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It’s so funny you say this…I remember when I made a thread essentially saying the same thing and a few people got in their feelings for some reason. This is exactly how I feel and what I was explaining in that thread.
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At some point if a reviewer says, it “feels like a lighter faster shutter, same feeling in the hand” I probably get the basic idea. Some frame of reference. Also setup, the reviewer might have a better bearing, string and response, so it feels like a different yo-yo.
I only saw one review where the person admitted he switched out a flat bearing. Definitely, a reviewer should be forthright if they tinker around before reviewing.
I watch Dylan Kowalski, because I find his videos entertaining.
I have yet to finish a Throws n Brews video in a while now, I watch enough to see the yo-yo then move on.
Neither of them have influenced a purchase.
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I think the difference between what he said and you said is that your initial point was based on peoples skill level. I know in following comments you mentioned that wasn’t your feeing or intent but that I think was the reason it became hot. Let’s not rehash that though.
Personally I take yo-yo reviews with a grain of salt.
I appreciate however when anyone makes yo-yo content because it is not exactly a money making endeavor it’s something they are doing because they enjoy sharing about something their interests .
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I think there are two major problems with reviews.
One is that if you say you don’t like something, someone always gets their feelings hurt. And on here that can be owners of the company or other people that might feel they have something to lose by bad comments.
Two is that it’s hard sometimes for us to find something to complain about. We are huge yo-yo fanatics and geeks. We are on a yo-yo forum. I like just about every yo-yo. And I have liked every yo-yo I have bought in the last year. Perhaps with help from reviews. I like each one for different reasons. And we just have a great selection online.
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I did mention skill level but at the same time, the initial point was the same. At the end of the initial post, I state the same thing that garret did, which was that I feel most of these reviews should be called something else. The only difference was that I mentioned the word skill. Garrett was one of the first people to like and support that post. I most definitely don’t want to rehash that though. I love seeing people creating content and doing what makes them happy.
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