Hey y’all, here’s an interview with @Palli about the history of the Tornado Bind (aka the DNA Bind), the most popular yo-yo trick of the past few years. I hope you enjoy!
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When kids at school ask me if I can do the DNA I inevitably respond “oh you mean the tornado bind?”
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Exactly what I say.
I really don’t like this social media ‘DNA’ bind movement. It’s low quality yoyo exposure.
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I’m sure there are those who feel that any exposure at all, even low quality exposure, is better than none at all, which, as I understand it, is basically what yoyoing has been getting since the last boom died out in the late 1990s. Maybe they’re right?
I, for one, am skeptical that social media exposure has done anything to meaningfully move the needle on interest in the hobby or growth of the industry, but I don’t have any hard numbers to support my intuition. I think the COVID lockdown–and all the isolation and down-time people suddenly found themselves with–induced a bump in interest, and social media surely played a significant role in that. However, I wonder if that bump has sustained itself or has dwindled to more or less pre-COVID levels now that things are essentially back to normal.
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Thanks to tornado bind the risk of doing a walk the dog in the public is no more. XD
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It’s definitely is the new walk the dog!
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Yes !!! What a relief 
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I think all it’s serving to do is make yoyo look gimmicky. It doesn’t really show what it is to play yoyo or inspire people to learn.
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This is quite a coincidence because I thew the same trick just a couple days before of Palli did it in World, I did it in a small contest in Vietnam, which celebrate in around mid or end July of 2013 if I remembered the date correctly. This is a clip of a small event and it was me at 1:15 doing it.
I remembered practicing the same trick quite a while before doing it and my story is I got it from after seeing MoMo from C3 doing fingerspin and it was a trend back then.
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Exactly, I’m glad I’m not the only one. Call it gatekeeping or whatever but I have seen what low quality exposure does to the community.
The argument is if 100 people got into yoyoing and only 1 stays, that’s a good thing because you gain one person net, but it doesn’t really work that way. If suddenly 100 people got into yoyoing and then 99 quit, this reinforce the image to the public that yoyoing is just a fad, not something you work on for years (like skateboarding for example). What I prefer to see is organic albeit slow growth.
This is true at least in my area, yoyoing is still viewed as a fad that comes and goes. I have a local club that has been steadily going up since 2010, some time in 2016-ish Auldey came with their TV show and suddenly a lot of kids are into yoyoing. Fast forward 2018 it dies along with the fad, and there is no regeneration.
After the pandemic, we tried starting up again, but as of today there is only like 3 people who is active in my area.
Is it all just a coincidence? I don’t know.
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Very interesting video thanks Doc, honestly I do not mind if it’s all over the social, is not a trick I would do on a daily basis but I can see that impress people, when they see the string going into “dna” everyone is excited, I did it couple of times in front of my girlfriend’s friends and they seemed very impressed, which wasn’t for some other much harder strings combos, as someone said is the new walk the dog and it’s fine!
If it get use to share the yoyo over social and the world I am ok with it, someone start looking at the dna and discover that before the dna there are so many tricks to learn and some other to discover much harder, some start and give up and some continue but that is in every hobby, sport, whatever, just to let people try I think it is a victory.
I do not see people starting and leaving as a fad it demonstrate mostly that is not an easy hobby to achieve and need lot of practice and motivation, I see the same thing in piano playing for 200 that started 1 stay, piano at the very beginning is very easy and people start to give up around Grade 3 ABRSM when hands together independence and coordination start to be real part of the pieces, it doesn’t make look piano bad it does make it look hard.
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Thanks for sharing that video. That’s an interesting twist. It still seems that Palli’s “grindwinder” version predates this by a year, but this might be the first recorded version of the fingerspin version of the bind (versus the palm grind version).
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2:51 in this might be the oldest “DNA” grindwinder I know of. Circa 2005 via our very own Andre!
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