Well, the fitness equipment industry sells billions of dollars worth of equipment that nobody uses. This is good news for the fitness equipment industry, I suppose, but it doesn’t mean people are fit.
I also recall when video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band became super popular. For a while there was a surge in guitar sales, but 99.99% of those guitars either got returned or just collected dust as kids discovered that playing the real thing was infinitely harder than the video games, and wasn’t nearly as much fun as the guitar gods made it look. 15 years later nobody is talking about those games and kids aren’t playing guitars in droves as a result either.
I’d love to believe that TikTok has the power to make yoyoing more than a fad again, but I’m not even sure that TikTok isn’t itself just another fad. I mean, how long before it gets replaced by the next shiny social media platform to capture kids’ microscopic attention spans? Hoping that one fad will have the long-term reach and staying power necessary to move the needle on the fortunes of another fad sounds a bit like wishful thinking. But I hope I’m wrong.
I don’t disagree with anything you said, but I think there’s a more optimistic way to look at it. In the same way a lot of people here started during a boom period, whether it be with early Duncan/Tom Kuhn stuff or the 90s boom, this is just another popularity boom. Most people starting now will get bored and quit, but a lot will either stick with it or rediscover it later on. A current fad is what will be referred to 20 years from now as another boom period.
It will be interesting to see, years from now, whether the collaboration between social media and a global pandemic led to a genuine “boom” in yoyoing or just another momentary blip of popularity. I think, however, that what most of us really yearn for is something more sustained than just another boom period. Booms are like the tide, they come and they go, and their effect on the landscape is subtle and incremental on a geological scale. But maybe booms are the best yoyoing can hope for?
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Grendel
(The Voice of All Grendel’s world wide.)
1975
What ever happened to scarecrow or as he’s known now, crow?
This video is actually what got me into yoyo-ing! Saw RANDOMLY from YT recommendeds
I had no clue you could do so much with them.
I had only ever seen a responsive yoyo and learned rock the baby and stopped and then saw this and unresponsive tricks seemed so fun!
I had gotten a fizz and b grade arcade for like $30 total approx - learned the basic responsives - learned to bind - Hit my first trapeze mount after and it was over, I was hooked.
Any else in the category of liking small diameter, wide, and heavy throws? It just clicked that the only undersized throws I like are slower and heavier.
I think any 50-52mm diameter or less yoyo that maintains the same 65ish gram weight as yoyos around 54-56mm, would be considered heavier. if they maintained the same amount of material relative to size, the undersized throws should be much lighter
The smallest and densest I really enjoy are the OG Puffin or A-RT Quail. I’ve struggled to connect with undersized yoyos. Maybe I should try something small diameter and wide, though.
At 52mm diameter and 69g, an ILYY Mary that I got recently is on the limit of what works for me. It’s small for my big hands and heavier than what I normally like but the added power from its weight is pretty important.
