The 2019 World Yo-Yo Contest Thread

Yo-Yo Contests, Clubs, and Events
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Here’s a small collection of a few memes that appeared on my instagram that, in some way or another, try to minimize, invalidate or ridiculize Gentry’s win. Those are posted on @whip.annconolly and @slackyyoyomemes accounts.

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I wanted to bring this to attention here. Yes, people can do whatever they want on the internet, but it is very, very sad when you remember yoyo players are real people with feelings.

If you believe what these people are doing is harmless, take it from Gentry himself, which did an AMA on r/Throwers about 10 months ago and opened his heart and left a comment, here’s part of it.

There have been so many times where I’ve wanted to quit yoyoing. Over the last 10 years, I’ve poured my heart and soul into yoyoing. Actual blood, sweat, and tears. I’ve read literally THOUSANDS of comments from people I’ve never met, and some that I have met, talking about how much I suck, how terrible my tricks are, how I never deserved to win said contest, how bad my routines are, how much they hate the yoyos I’ve designed, how much they hate me, and many, many more comments of disapproval. I’ve spent countless hours staring at a wall or ceiling wondering how people can have so much hate toward me. Little do they know, EVERY comment hits me harder and contributes to the times where I feel like I want to quit yoyoing.
On top of that, I have failed a lot of times in my yoyo career. This year, I put in about 8 hours a day for 8-10 months to try to win the World Yoyo Contest again. I also went to Japan to train for almost a month before the contest, and was told by some of the most profound people in the yoyo community that my routine was the best ever. Everyone was telling me I was going to win. When it came time to perform my routine, I messed up. I totally ruined the freestyle. I hit maybe 70% of the routine when I needed to hit 90%. I got off stage thinking “Did that actually just happen?”. I walked straight to my hotel room, threw my bag on the floor, and found myself staring at a wall… again. I called my mom across the world with tears in my eyes, telling her that I don’t ever want to touch a yoyo again.
So yes, I understand how you feel. I know what its like to want to quit.

To finish this, I want to leave this comment from Rei Iwakura, respected figure in the yoyo community and six-time 4A World Champion, who said this after observing the negative pulse of great part of the community towards this year’s results.

rei
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I am sickened and disgusted and that’s ok. The situation won’t change. I just wanted to vent my feelings towards this here and maybe bring some awareness into this topic.

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I only feel bad for Gentry in the sense that he hasn’t yet realized how meaningless 99.9% of negative Internet commentary truly is. It is all just worthless noise that doesn’t merit any kind of consideration, much less the kind that makes you contemplate quitting the thing you love most in life.

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That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt

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Positive feedback still feels a lot better than negative :man_shrugging:

Idk about other people but I sure feel a lot better when I get 100+ upvotes vs. 10 on Reddit for my tricks :joy:

Probably the same thing with a 99/1 like to dislike ratio rather than the 70/30 last time I checked

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It hurts only if you allow yourself to give a cr@p about it. The toxic garbage that fills most of the spaces of the Internet is not worth reading in the first place, much less giving a cr@p about.

Seeking validation from people who mean nothing to you or your life is a good way to guarantee you’re frequently going to feel down on yourself for no good reason. I am convinced that social media has provided the most efficient transmission vector for insecurity and low self-esteem in the history of humanity.

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I mean. Yeah, technically you are not wrong. But, I think it’s not that noble to shift this and blame Gentry for not having enough emotional stability to handle the massive hate he’s receiving.

Not paying attention to it is one way to go about it, but there’s sensible people out there who do not roll that way. Just because you can act that way doesn’t mean it’s that easy for everyone.

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I’m not blaming Gentry, I’m feeling bad for him.

And I never said it was easy, only that doing so is the best way to inoculate oneself to the pain, particularly if one is going to continue to wade in the cesspool of social media. It is a matter of perspective mostly.

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Oh, I get you. Sorry for implying those things about your comment.

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it takes a particular kind of person to be capable of that and ngl it’s hard

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Imagine working an entire year to achieve something, and once you finally do you get put down the way he is being now.

People are human ffs., get off your high horse.

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You got any proof to back up your claim here?

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He’s just stating some facts and not trying to grab some moral high ground or something, and he clarified that he is no way blaming Gentry. Go and pick on those actually bissing Gentry if you really have all the time on the internet.

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Gentry and his tricks were awesome and although I am still learning scoring, I can see how he outright won the contest: he took a bit less risk to have a cleaner freestyle while also doing many original difficult tricks. He also went after many risky tricks (which was great), and messed some up, but messed these up less than the other top competitors IMO. Gentry also looked faster and looked like he did more tricks than whom I thought was comparable.

I don’t often say things that are quite obvious to me, like Gentry creating an awesome routine and doing it so cleanly to take the title, huge congrats and there’s a lot of tricks to learn in that routine.

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Will someone move this to it’s own topic and pin it so more will see it?

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Pinning is almost never necessary, but @vegabomb or @jhb8426 could move this subtopic to its own topic.

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He only does the lasso thing at the end because it risks a lot of snag. If he did the same bind in the middle of the freestyle, it sure would’ve snagged a bit.

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There should be like a category thats like “overall impression of freestyle”. I think it would rank players better according to their skill. :thinking:

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I think skill is being misused here.

That’s implying the most skilled is whoever’s freestyle is the most crowd pleasing, which definitely isn’t always true.

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A win is a win. That’s all I need to know.

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