The forum creates Yoyo Envy which gets people to buy more yoyos or feel less Cool because they are not attaching a $90-$200 yoyo to their finger or because they do not have a budget that allows them to make a new “what did you get in the mail this week?” post every other week.
i agree with this very much. well said, dude
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I spent a good part of 2018 building up my collection. This year I plan to review the majority of said collection. I’m having a lot of fun getting to know the ins and outs of each yoyo while I evaluate them for review. I may run out of yoyos to review some time in 2020. Then I’ll focus on trimming the collection down to just the essentials.
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Yea, I sort of see an unhealthy materialistic trend in the yoyo community. Yoyo reviewers are basically thinly veiled advertisements for yoyo companies, and it works really well. But it doesnt end with just the reviewers; people in the community have a spending addiction and hype new yoyos endlessly, which makes people want to buy them. Then you have boutique companies that make limited drops, and you either pull the trigger or are unable to obtain said yoyo (unless you go the BST route, which is limited and can be risky). I get that the yoyo community wouldn’t be able to operate without all of these sales, but the compulsion to endlessly buy yoyos is definitely apparent to me (as a relatively new initiate). I remember seeing a post by a kid whose parents no longer wanted him on this forum because they thought it was an elaborate sales scheme. It sounds like mad paranoia, and while it isnt literally true, the community definitely has an underlying buy buy buy! mentality that requires a bit of willpower to overcome (unless you are a kid and don’t have access to money/credit cards).
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I too have / had a compulsion to buy, buy, buy and almost did not want to post photos of my last two purchases because a lot of people can’t afford new yoyos or only have “budget” (under $20) yoyos that get dissed all the time while being bombarded with images of $90 - $200 “what did you get in the mail this week” yoyos. The yoyo industry is just like any other - hyping every new product as what you’ve been waiting for and need so don’t be left in the dust and settle for what you have because even though we convinced you to buy it last year, this new thing is far superior.
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I mean, I guess. But to be honest man, you gotta let go of that stuff. The forum isn’t doing that, the other people posting yoyos they own aren’t doing that, you are doing that to yourself.
There are always going to be expensive things in life that we can’t buy. And there are always going to be other people who can buy those things. Perhaps they are rich and have money to burn. Or perhaps they just prioritize their life differently and spend their money on yoyos instead of going out to eat or seeing a movie or paying for cable or whatever.
The point is that if you let envy of what others have and what you don’t have define your enjoyment in life, you are destined to always be disappointed.
We’re in an era when there are more affordable high performance yoyos available than ever before. There is literally nothing a $200 yoyo can do that a $30-50 yoyo can’t do aside from perhaps look cool and have unique materials. Heck, never forget that Gentry won Nationals with a $15 yoyo. So throw up photos of all the budget yoyos you want. No shame in that game at all. But at the same time, don’t let the fact that others enjoy tossing money at fancy expensive yoyos spoil throwing for you.
Here’s the $12 yoyo I picked up the other day and have been enjoying.
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Well, to be fair, I have quite a number of $30-50 throws and none of them can do what most of my $100-$150 bimetals can do. Not in my hands anyway.
I think it is somewhat disingenuous to point to what a former champion like Gentry Stein can do with a $15 plastic yoyo when most of us will never have 1% of his skill level. I hold undying appreciation for what higher-end yoyos do in helping me progress with fewer (hardware-based) obstacles. I’m simply not skilled enough (yet) to take a cheap throw with only modest spin time and stability and extract more fun out of it than I do out of my One Drops and various bimetals.
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I think you miss the crux of the post.
This is not a hobby that requires $150 yoyos to enjoy. To pretend otherwise is silly.
And perhaps most importantly, the idea that other people enjoying $150 yoyos somehow makes it a less enjoyable hobby to someone with a $30 yoyo is the kind of toxic mindset that will ruin all the best things in life.
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Well, I wasn’t speaking for anyone else but me.
I was simply pointing out that just like you can’t make a blanket statement about how everyone needs an expensive yoyo to have fun (which I wasn’t making), neither can you make a blanket statement that everyone should be able to have just as much fun with a cheaper throw as with a more expensive one (which you seemed to be making).
Well, I mean, okay I guess. If you want to believe that the hobby isn’t as much fun without a $150 yoyo, that’s between you and your wallet. I don’t agree and I think that the bell curve would show that a majority of people can do the same tricks with a $200 yoyo as they could with a $50 yoyo. But you surely aren’t the only one in the world who feels that way. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the expensive version of things. I ride bikes with dudes who drop $5k to huff and puff up the same hills I do. They obviously feel that’s necessary, and more power to them. As long as they have fun. At the end of the day when we’re all lying on our death beds, the brands and pricetags and colorways won’t matter, only the fun and love and memories will.
But the larger point was that the issue shouldn’t be that other people having something you do not have shouldn’t ruin things for you. That way lies madness.
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I agree completely.
I just think it was unnecessary to make (somewhat unfair) blanket judgments about what expensive yoyos can do relative to less expensive ones in order to make that larger point.
I hope you don’t mind but I broke this out into its own topic, it will get lost in the “what are you throwing in 2019” topic and I think it deserves its own discussion because it is an interesting one!
As far as collecting goes, one thing to bear in mind is there are INSANE DEALS in #buy-sell-trade here and elsewhere. You don’t need to spend a ton of money on yo-yos, because good lord you can get a used yo-yo at ½ to ¼ the original retail price… sometimes even less.
Plus metal yo-yos don’t exactly wear out, do they? They could be resold for decades, hopping from owner to owner with only minor maintenance on the bearing and axle? It’s actually hard to damage a metal yo-yo such that it’s no longer playable. They last a LONG time.
Also, can we also talk about how great the $10-$15 metal MagicYoyo N12 Shark’s Honor is? Even back in 2010 it would be literally impossible to get a metal yo-yo of this quality for that incredibly low of a price.
Heck even buying new, drop $30 on a Colossus IV and you’ve got a fantastic metal yo-yo with an incredible splash anodization for dirt cheap.
Below that price, many of the plastics are quite good too!
There’s just no reason you’d need to spend much on this hobby. I can think of so many other hobbies that are dramatically more expensive.
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Agreed. But only insofar as need isn’t a relevant driver for yoyo purchases on any level anyway.
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It can. I’ll just leave it at that…
Good call, thanks.
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(also I like that the guy in the above picture apparently owns a chicken along with his limo and gold bullion)
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I admit, I’m not immune to that myself. I have piles of yoyos and fly rods and fountain pens and all sorts of other stuff.
But it’s a message I try harder and harder to take to heart these days.
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Oh I have major yoyo envy from here!
I see what people are buying and throwing and wish I had one. Lol. Particularly new release bimetals.
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Yoyos are just so dang pretty these days. It is nigh impossible to look at them when they are announced and not want to get (some of) them, even if just to see how they play.
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Well the way I see it. Anybody that doesn’t have at least a 1000 yoyos. Including dozens of yo-yos that cost a pretty penny. And anybody that isn’t making an exerted effort to add at least several dozen $150+ yo-yos to their collection(because they are so much more fun🤓). Is obviously on the road to complete and irreversible Sadness and misery.
And everybody that feels you can’t have fun with affordable yo-yos because they just aren’t Draupnirs; should donate their brain to science.
You see; there is a secret you’ve never heard until now. 70 years ago when All the demonstrators were going around the Country throwing yo-yos. Those images of all the thousands of kids playing the primitive yo-yos.
They weren’t really smiling. It’s just that their expensive yoyo deprivation made them hysterical. So they simply ‘appeared’ to be smiling and having fun.
…And 20 years ago when the Spindoctors were busting out the craziest tricks on: Freehands and Renegades; they were not having any fun at all😳
They just kept throwing because they all saw into the future and realized they would live long enough to spend $150 or more on better playing yo-yos that are much more fun😍.
So if you don’t have a ton of expensive, super fun yo-yos; get a box of kleenex. And don’t drown in your tears as you die screaming.
Man up… You’re losers
PS… Last few days I have been throwing a V shaped yoyo with a little kitten in a cup; ingraved on the side.
I have no idea who makes it? But it plays as well as just about anything I have at any price.
But I am not having fun with it. I don’t squander ‘fun sensations on lower priced yo-yos. Because their price indicates their actual functionality; right?
Thanks Jeff😉
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