@angel2up has 3.2 million TikTok followers. His style is very distinct and is much deeper than just the tricks he does. His speaking style, his movements, his room, his lighting his clothes, and predictable format, they all combine to create a stage or framing for yoyoing that his audience has grown to understand. There’s negativity and jealousy that surrounds successful members of any community, but what you may not yet understand is that Angelo is that he is growing the exposure of yoyoing in a way few people have ever done before and he seems to have the ability to get non-yoyoers to see yoyoing as the art that we see it as.
So what are his secrets? You can hear them directly from Angelo himself because this week he was my guest on the “kill your yoyo” podcast and we went deep into how he was able to create his massive and passionate base of followers and how you can use what he’s learned to grow a following yourself. Give it a listen by searching for “kill your yoyo” in your favorite podcast app or by clicking thislink.
I got no hate on Angelo, he is doing the community a service with the exposure.
I think it would be nice if he could let them know if the resources to be found in the yoyoexpert forums, but I understand it would cut into sales on his personal store so it’s all good. If anyone watched him wanted to get more involved they could easily Google yoyo and find us.
I very much hope the Godspeed yoyo he released is a huge success for him. It plays great and is definitely not a gimmick.
There are a handful of very talented yoyoers sharing content on TikTok and it’s a very easy learning curve to get I to if you ever want to share your talent.
I recommend using Capcut for editing. It makes it super easy.
Thank you again for interviewing him. He has a huge amount of patience with being asked to do the same tricks all the time.
It would be interesting to see if there is any statistically measurable correlation between Angelo’s emergence on TikTok and a commensurate rise in yoyo sales (or any other hard data indicator of an increase in new blood entering and staying in the hobby). I love that he is exposing lots of people–mostly young people I would assume–to yoyoing. That is a very important first step. The next step is converting those viewers into throwers. That’s that hard part. And arguably the part that matters the most to the hobby long-term.
I sometimes feel like we need to deploy strange men in trench coats to stand on street corners tossing out “free-samples” after the cops rolled down the block…
"Hey kid, wanna try a Brain-Twister? You’ve never felt a high like this until you’ve Split-the-Atom for four hours straight.
Cmon, you know you wanna Shutter… fiddy bucks and its yours…"
If it is true that the largest contact patch for making traction with young people today is social media, and I have no reason to believe otherwise at this point, then Angelo is certainly on the right track. I’m just not sure where you take it from here. Like, is one “social media star” enough? Do we need lots of them to solidify the idea that anyone can succeed at yoyoing, and that it isn’t only suitable for a few talented savants? Maybe yoyoing needs to branch out beyond TikTok now. In what other ways can we entice young people to try something so new and different? Something that is difficult and challenging and not necessarily (psychologically) rewarding right away? Moreover, I kinda feel that yoyoing needs to be something lots of kids do together so that nobody feels like a weirdo loner.
Couldn’t be more stoked to have this guy as our “face” for this new generation. Really dig this guy, and have been a fan of his even though I don’t TikTok. Great listen, thanks for the podcast.
I love Angelo he is one of my most favorite players of all time.
However;
Tiktok Is A spying app for the CCP. There is no getting around it. Bytedance tech company designed tiktok in collaboration with the chinese government in order to spy on people around the globe. China already has Video surveilance cameras on every street that can put a face to a name in a millisecond. Social media sites track your cookies when you click agree, so they are tracking you. Tiktok was designed to be an addictive interface with mainstream content that would get you hooked. That is how tiktok became the number 1 social media platform of all time.
How often does Angelo make TikToks where he hangs out with fellow yoyo players? Nearly all of the TikToks I see–which aren’t that many, I grant you, and all of them are compilations on YouTube since I don’t have a TikTok account and never will–feature one person, doing something alone.
That’s fine and all, but I have been watching Brandon Vu’s recent vlogs where he’s been visiting guys like Evan Nagao and Gentry Stein, and I find those videos incredibly entertaining and inspiring. They make me want to grab a yoyo and start throwing. Not because they are teaching me something new about yoyoing, but because of the fun and comraderie on display. That’s just not something I see much of on TikTok.
I’ve watched a couple of Angelo’s lives, and in addition to being a fantastic player, he’s always struck me as being a very nice and humble guy. It’s fun to watch him do tricks that are utterly fantastic, and sometimes he goes so fast that everything’s a blur! I honestly don’t know how he can have that level of patience with his fan base; it doesn’t matter how many times he’s “gone godspeed” or has “done the DNA”, whenever someone asks usually responds with “I got you” and honors the request. I’m not nearly good enough to have even a single fan, but I can’t imagine being that indulgent and accommodating all the time. I think that’s one of the reasons that he’s got so many followers.
Just checked and he’s got another 1 million followers since this was first posted a year ago so good for him. He’s cool af like way cooler than I was when I was that age, in fact all the ambassadors of yo seem cool. Like not lames. Like all love for docpop but it does seem like yoyoers were kind of the outcast kids in days past and I’m only calling out docpop because the name acknowledges that he was a lame, but yoyoers are the cool kids now it seems idk y’all get the point.
yee Insta is 
he beats em both for sheer presentation 