Obviously competitions are important but only a tiny percentage of throwers ever compete and even those who follow competitions are a fraction of the larger fan base.
I’ll tell you what got me into it and a lot of other people: cool videos.
And I don’t mean some guy in his room doing sick combos or anyone on stage, I mean a well produced and awesome looking video with slow mo etc that makes people think “That looks awesome, I want to try that.”
This Rally video is IMO one of the best ever made and it is, what, 6 years old? This is the kind of stuff we need
I can see how contests help keep things going, but this ^^^^ is what got me in and continues to inspire. Some of the craziest, arguably most important, innovators of all time have never made a big splash in contests (umm… Sid Seed, Ricardo Fraolini, etc.). Meanwhile, videos continue to be a great source for inspiring, creative, pure yoyoing (Tyler Vienneau).
Well, people have been dissatisfied with the contest scoring system for many years and years but it doesn’t seem like there’s been a meaningful change - where meaningful would be a change to the scoring system that shifts contest-style yoyoing away from a simple “more is more” numbers game. Again, some of the most amazing yoyoers are/were not rewarded in the contest system as it is, and I’m pessimistic that this will change. I totally lost interest in contest results and contest freestyle videos but would love to be excited about it again.
I’ve always thought the same thing dude. By now it’s become a common practice in just about everything. One of the first things that comes to mind is the use of videos like this in skating. I mean skate teams have been filming videos before YouTube even existed, and since then have adapted pretty well to most modern forms of social media.
I think it’d be great to see more videos like this in yoyoing .
.