My Thoughts On Tiktok And Yoyoing

Tiktok is doing great things for yoyoing in my opinion. For the first time you see yoyoers consistently getting millions of followers and millions of views. It helps get modern day yoyoing in front of the eyes of millions of people every single day. What do yall think about the yoyo boom on Tiktok? To me it seems like a lot more people may be interested in yoyoing than you think.

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I think it’s a good way to get young people into the hobby. In a way it’s a “cradle to grave” advertisement for modern yoyo~

But. I feel like they need a DNA 2.0 or a new trick to spread around…

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That’s what I was thinking. They got the attention now someone needs to get a little more creative

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Wrong. You can only get their attention if you refer it to emojis. Otherwise they can’t comprehend what it is. Jk I’m a millennial- what was I talking about again?

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I’ve never used tiktok but I see a lot of the videos reposted to instagram. It’s amazing that they’re getting the views they’re getting. I’m not too keen on the videos as it’s just emoji tricks and frantic speed combos. But you gotta get peoples attention fast or they’ll just scroll past I guess. I hope it inspires a new boom

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The thing about tiktok and view count is- it gives you a random video based on an algorithm. Then you skip to the next few sec-min video. Even if you watch for 1 second it counts as a view. I feel the view count is skewed and should be taken with a grain of context

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Yeah that’s true about the view but I’ve thing that can’t be over looked is the millions of followers that they are obtaining

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True

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i like that tiktok is exposing yoyo to more people.

i dont know if i like how people are getting this extremely fixated in going viral on tiktok tho.

i want yoyo to grow, but yoyo has zero need to be viral/mainstream/widespread. The truth is that niche hobbies like this will always be small.

I base this observation around other similar hobbies. Look at how massive kendama and even speedcubing is, and yet, they are not (and will never be) viral or mainstream.

I think an ideal scenario would be yoyo to have so much exposure, everyone gets to at least be aware of how modern yoyo looks like. Then, the people who are genuinely interested will come and enjoy the hobby.

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What do you think makes skateboarding more mainstream than yoyoing?

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Skateboarding is cool. Skaters are cool. At least when I was a skater. Its kind of like a group in every school. Yoyoers are dorks and nerdy and that’s ok because we all know deep down we are

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It’s a mode of transportation. The risk-factor is MUCH higher. There’s a lot more money involved.

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There are skateboarding parks dedicated for skateboarding. The skateboard community gets to meet there in person. And the media, especially fashion brands, keep milking skateboarding.

Like this ad that I found


Maybe if we had yoyoparks (whatever that’s supposed to be) and the media would milk this hobby for their ads we would be mainstream too

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That’s why yo-yo events take (took…) place. We need them to happen again.

To me they are very, very similar. And everyone i used to skate with shows a ton of interest in yoyoing and many have suggested trying to get our local shop to sell yoyos

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I want to make yoyo parks like skating rinks. A nice floor space to throw, cool lighting, great music, yoyo shop, food court, arcade.

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Man that’d be cool

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I’m gonna try to build one where I live

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I didn’t even know that yoyo was becoming a thing on Tiktok. I guess now I need to learn how to fingerspin to impress kids, lol. Honestly, good, im glad people are enjoying yoyo tricks. Gentry is really making an impact as a liaison to yoyoing.

This. I listen to underground metal (death/black/grind/doom/stoner/etc), and occasionally the conversation comes up about who the next Metallica is going to be to reignite the mainstream appeal. And as an avid concert goer (pre-COVID), id say that the scene is doing just fine as it is. It doesn’t appeal to everyone, nor will it ever. It doesn’t need to. I also don’t have to like other niche hobbies that I have no interest in.

As for yoyo parks, lol. You can literally yoyo anywhere; unlike skateboarding which needs pavement and obstacles. And since street skating while loitering at a good spot is basically illegal for liability reasons, skate parks are a necessity to grow the hobby. Growing yoyo has always been about teaching kids, and while I think it used to work, we live in a new world now. Maybe it is just up to the guys/gals who yoyo to show off and impress people? It is a performance art after all.

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The fact that skateboarding is fundamentally different from yoyo.

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