I hear ya, @Exmime. All the stability that a modern high-performance yoyo provides does sort of make it feel like I’m yoyoing on Easy Mode. I’m okay with that since I’m not really keen on making it harder on myself to yoyo, even if that means my technique stays a bit sloppy (for the time being).
Interestingly, competition throws have gotten wider and wider every year, which is intended to make landing tricks easier. However, I find that wider does not always equate to easier, especially because wider also means the yoyo will hit strings I don’t want it to during tricks, making it actually harder to execute them. Nevertheless, players manage to make wide yoyos work for them, which is a testament to the adaptive power of the human brain.
I definitely would not call it unpopular. I mean, I can remember being the kid that could barely throw a trapeze that wanted to be sponsored (I was 10 and I did not beg anyone, I promise ).
I think part of the trouble is that just about everyone grows up with a phone and some form of social media these days. Whenever I go out and about, there is always some kid nose deep in their phone. Now I am 17, this means that I grew up with phones starting to come out. My parents made sure I was the last in my class to get a phone (I think I was in 8th grade) and they gave me rules. I think there is a sort of lack of these rules with some of these kids, like they know how to act in the “real” world, but the internet becomes this “alternate ego.” While this does not excuse these kids, it explains the rational of them.
Some of the older people of this board can remember picking up the family phone and saying “Mr. (insert father’s last name), this is son/daughter speaking.” I never learned to do that. I still have trouble on some phone calls.
I think part of it is just youth, like in 5 or so years, they will look back an be like “what the heck, why did I do that?” It is our purpose to shorten this 5 or so year gap by carefully calling them out. Like everyone loves free yoyos, I will totally attest to that. I have been one to enter any yoyo related giveaway I can, but at the same time, I know that there are boundaries.
Anyways, I know this is sort of a rant and I do apologize for that, but that is just my 2 cents on it as part of Gen Z.
This is true for most people outside the yoyo community. To the average person yoyoing is still walk the dog, rock the baby, loops, and picture tricks.
That’s very true. And to the few who don’t see it that way, it’s influenced by something they’ve seen on TV. For example, that guy (I think his name is Black?) with the crazy 2A TED Talk presentation, or that Vsauce video about 4A. Most people wouldn’t have any idea the variety of different styles and skills that are possible in modern yoyo.
What pushed me farther into yoyoing was when in 2018 my old boss was always seeing me with yoyos. He asked me to do rock the baby (I never really bothered with that much) so I did it for him and he was impressed but I knew it was not that great and it frustrated me. I had a Duncan trick book with Brain Twister illustrations. I studied those 2 pages and watched videos and a few weeks later I learned Brain Twister. I was so proud to show it to my boss. When he saw me do it he was impressed and immediately asked me to do walk the dog. The classic tricks are what people know and are easy to understand. I lost my train of thought…
The most likely people to not enjoy easy tricks are yoyoers themselves. We take ourselves way to seriously and lose the enjoyment of the simplistic in the race to grasp the complex. We learn a trick, move forward, and forget the work and joy those simple tricks awarded us. We look down our noses at those inferior tricks. What’s worse, we sometimes talk about non yoyoers that have knowledge of a few tricks, even if they can’t do them, with a bit of frustration and sometimes comtempt.
Well said! I don’t consider any trick “simple” because I will always remember how difficult they were for me at one time and I love to revisit them every day.
nailed it! this attitude also keeps novices and amateurs not only from wanting to demonstrate their (sometimes meager) skills, but can get them into a rut of ‘trick envy’ (similar to collection envy i would imagine)…
some of the best videos i’ve been seeing lately are folks just grinding through, keeping the camera going through mess-ups, etc…
yeah, always clean, pro trick videos are great… you can fInd millions of them anywhere… they get generic to a point… i like seeing a missed bind, a simple trick, etc… those cats are human, like me
At the end of the day, I don’t care nor need to be the best yoyoer in the room, just the one that’s had the most fun. I’m always disappointed by a performance, regardless of the activity, that lacks joy and enthusiasm.
If companies like Kitty String and Monkey Finger Designs only sold strings in packs of 5 would those strings be considered “boutique” strings? People seem to always refer to strings by those companies as “bulk” because they offer string in boxes of 100. You know, like in reviews a person will say Monkey Finger is my favorite BULK string…” What gives? Just askin’!
i personally have bought “boutique” strings and they’ve sucked… won’t name any brands, but i think a lot of it try to capture hype, bulk strings get a bad name but they do the work
Personally, I think of it in terms of production. So “bulk” means they’re made in bulk, in a factory churning out hundreds or thousands of strings all the time. Whereas I’m just a dude making them ten at a time on a jig I made on my pool table. Bulk doesn’t mean bad, if it did they wouldn’t exist. And boutique doesn’t mean good, it just means small business hand-making them. If you prefer kitty or MFD or any other bulk string, then that’s what you like and it’s not wrong. I think people associate “boutique = quality” but that’s not always true. When I first started making strings for myself, they sucked lol.
There are 5 packs out there that aren’t boutique prices. However I wish the so called “Boutique Brands” would sell some bulk at a price per unit discount.
Just to pick nits, here is my two cents. I think there are two ideas here:
Mass Produced vs. “Artisanal” (maybe “handmade”?) - Here Kitty is clearly mass produced, and @BadWolfeCo artisanal.
small package (~5) vs. bulk (>=25?) - This could be independent of how they are made.
I usually think of bulk as being packaging, but it could also mean produced in bulk. So while bulk packages are usually mass produced, they don’t have to be. And mass produced are sold in small packages.
Yeah. I can’t say I’ve ever had any “bad” strings, just strings I did not prefer. It’s a lot of pairing the right string with the right yoyo. A good string on one yoyo will not feel good on another yoyo.
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