Vs. Newton Charity Issues (2019)

General Yo-Yo
1

Am I the only one here who remembers the past???

I’m on team Grendel here.

Relevant past:

This wasn’t a business issue. This isn’t the Throwdown guy who sold a run of yo-yos with 100% failure rate and couldn’t offer refunds. This isn’t someone who missed a release date.

Heath ran a major charity campaign and used the nearly $5000 it raised for personal use. It took multiple people making a fairly aggressive public investigation/callout before he eventually made good multiple years later. Throughout this, he was repeatedly evasive at best or blatantly dishonest at worst.

Frankly, I believe he used up multiple chances during this and I’m quite displeased to see him back. I have no interest in supporting him, his company, or any projects associated with his company. (If we’re going to use a business analogy as I saw upthread, this feels like supporting Elizabeth Holmes’ next business vs. Steve Jobs return to Apple)

I’m apparently in the distinct minority here but wanted to get this off my chest. I will be taking an indefinite/permanent leave from this forum now since the amount of posts/energy about this project is aggravating me and yoyoing is supposed to be fun.

11 Likes
2

Is that accurate, though? From my reading of the historical topics, he used the money for other yo-yo related activities such as paying for his team to go to yo-yo contests (Worlds), which he had already promised them?

I was stuck with a few weeks before the last worlds I attended, no money, and a promise to my team to pay their way, entry, etc. I KNOW it was the worst decision I could have ever made. I should have just told them sorry and not went, but I didn’t. I made the most horrible decision I’ve ever made. I borrowed against the charity money to send myself and my team to worlds…

My take is that making a mistake isn’t the full measure of a person but how they handle fixing their mistakes is. And based on my reading of the relevant topics, I felt Heath fixed this and fully apologized.

And for the record we’ll be raising $10k plus for charity from the Ti-Vayder.

10 Likes
3

Yeah this is “not my circus, not my monkeys”, but I will say that I agree w Nathan & Grendel and am kind of incredulous about such a dark chapter in recent yo-yoing history being water under the bridge.

Heath said sorry and I can FORGIVE the cascade of nefarious acts - the theft and the lies surrounding it. I know a lot of the players around here were not around when the issue went down, and I appreciate that Jeff is trying to recreate what he feels is a great yo-yo AND try to support charity. I don’t care how good the yo-yo is - to me, it’s fruit of the poison tree.

Watching J-rod and others have to scream into the wind and demand public disclosure to see any kind of accountability indicated to me that Heath would 100% have allowed (& preferred) those funds and that theft to have skated by undetected.

Again - I understand that under duress, he apologized, paid the money, and took some time mostly away. I think it’s one thing for him to be part of the community, if that’s what he wants, but I don’t support this project, and still less do I support the idea of VsNewton being rebooted (not that I labor under the delusion that either of those things require my support).

19 Likes
4

i firmly believe that there are no situations where heath could sabotage this, even if he wanted to, which i am reasonably convinced that he doesn’t. he handles zero money, has the SECOND largest say in what happens with this project, making anything and everything overruleable by codinghorror, who we all know, trust, and love. there is only one time he has any unsupervised control over the project, and that is when he receives all the yoyos for testing, and the only thing that could possibly reasonably go wrong there is bad QC.

3 Likes
5

:thinking: but should you

11 Likes
6

Are you trying to sound the klaxons and warn everyone away from the TiVayder?

7

Yes. I trust you more than I trust some of my IRL friends.

5 Likes
8

You’re in college though, most college kids are jerks lmao

edit: sorry @codinghorror forgot it has to be PG here

1 Like
9

Uh no I think I heard it on Law & Order. :grimacing:

3 Likes
10

To me, if he had actually taken the money and bought a bunch of paintball guns or guitars with it, then this would be much more of a heinous, unforgivable actual crime.

It seems to me Heath got caught between a rock (promising to send yo-yo profits to charity) and a hard place (promising to use yo-yo profits to send his yo-yo team to Worlds) and … well, if there’s not enough money to do both of those things, what the heck do you do in that scenario?

So, being human and in a tough position… he made a bad call.

And eventually, fixed it, with an honest apology I’d grade as 9/10 on the apology-o-meter. I have seen SO MANY (oh my god soooo many) people that never apologize or, even worse, apologize in that crappy, insincere “I’m sorry you thought this was wrong” way. Heck I can count on one dang hand the number of times I’ve seen anyone honestly apologize for the bullcrap they’ve pulled online. And I have seen some :poop: my friends. I really have.

If you’ve never made a bad call in your life, you’re a luckier man than me. The true measure of a person is not avoiding mistakes, because mistakes are inevitable – it’s how you handle them.

13 Likes
11

What you do is:

  1. Don’t make promises that you can’t keep.
  2. Send the profits to the charity instead of sending your team to world’s.
8 Likes
12

Yes, not making mistakes is better than making mistakes. Thanks for clearing that all up for us :wink:

6 Likes
13

Ok, here’s a bit more transparency to my current mindset. I know that it likely won’t change anyone’s minds because to some of you every word from my mouth is a lie (and you’re entitled to feeling that way), but I will be able to say I tried rather than not.

Last Friday morning (3/8/19) I hadn’t the slightest idea that I would be here writing this. I was planning a game night of Crawl and sharing some craft beer with a few local friends.

That evening I was text messaged by an old friend from the community telling me that my Ti Walker design was being directly copied and the person doing so has been trying to contact me. I could see the posts but not reply, and the email I used to establish my YYE account is long gone so I had to get that corrected before I could even talk to this individual.

When that was all settled, I was finally able to see the months of messages @codinghorror had been sending me requesting that I rerun the Ti Walker.

He offered to flat out pay for me to have it done initially, then when I didn’t reply, eventually had a Ti Walker loaned to him to get scanned and have a prototype made over those months of trying to reach me. He continued to ask me to be a part of this project through this entire process. It was all written there. His intent. His reasoning. His promise to donate the proceeds to charity. All of it.

The community overall wants a Ti Walker rerun rather badly. Beyond that the man asking me for my blessing to rerun my design is rather capable, and offering to donate the entirety of proceeds made to any charity I want. He can easily run the design without asking, but wants my approval because he feels it’s the right thing to do. That is why we are all here.

None of this at all would be possible without Jeff. I have no personal funds that I could realistically allocate to start Vs. Newton over again even if I would have wanted to before all of this. This guy is dropping a CHUNK of change out of the kindness of his heart and to see people get a yoyo that they want, and is offering me what I see as my last even close to realistic shot to not only get players a yoyo that they want and get money to charity, but also maybe feel like I belong here again.

So, what am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to do? I’ve tested the prototype and it plays like a modern Ti Walker. A capable man is offering to front the entire bill and promises to donate the proceeds (non of which I will ever physically see if that wasn’t clear) to charity. All I have to do is give it my designers blessing. Of course I’m going to say yes. I want this community to get what it wants and I want to help when I can.

If at the end of all this I still don’t feel like I belong here I’ll leave and this will all be over. This rerun of my design will have donated thousands of dollars to charity and all those of you who still hate me have to do is sit idle and wait for me to leave. Life will of course go on either way. I really hope that it doesn’t go that way but I can’t not take this opportunity, and I’m sorry if that bothers you.

18 Likes
14

Jeff, clearly one is theft and the other is disappointing your team. It’s pretty clear to see which course of action should have been taken.

Having said that, we truly all do make mistakes. Even huge ones that hurt others.

4 Likes
15

Glen, can you really not see the difference between “disappointing” a charity, who will likely be here after you and I are both long dead, and disappointing the yo-yo team that you personally sponsored and are real world friends with? Can you really not see a plan that says “I can quickly come up with the extra money somehow and very soon everyone can get what I originally promised” and then having those plans fall apart? Can you really not understand the desire to keep quiet so that plan you are working on can come to fruition, and the plan after that, and the plan after that, until you’ve gotten in so deep that now it is hard to see your way out? Can you really not understand being bad at business, like sooo many people in the world are, and accidentally making terrible and unprofitable business decisions?

I agree that being up front and clear about what was happening could have avoided some of this. But if you honestly can’t put yourself in the shoes of someone who wanted so badly not to disappoint anyone, such that they made bad decisions as a result, then maybe think on that a bit.

11 Likes
16

Did the people that purchased the yoyos do it under the impression the proceeds were going to go to charity? I assume so, if so this is theft. It is taking money from those whom it was intended for.

Yes I can understanding the temptation for doing that under the pressure he was in. I can empathise with that, but it’s still wrong.

I can also understand this. There are no moral implications with this one, and it can make life hard and stressful.

No-one likes disappointing people, but from what I read, it sounds like he was avoiding the consequences of his actions.

In terms of wrongdoing, no-one is without it. Some people’s mistakes are more public, some private.

But one thing I do know; Christ did not bleed out on a cross bearing the sins (moral failure) of the whole world for you and I and people like Heath to walk around with a bad conscience.

There is forgiveness that stands for all time for all who trust in Him no matter how we judge a man. Romans 3:22-25:

“…For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith…”

Preaching over.

8 Likes
17

Then we are in agreement. What matters is redemption, for those that do the right thing, and honestly seek it.

3 Likes
18

Redemption is very important. Life and death stuff. But obtaining it by doing the right thing? Utterly impossible.

4 Likes
19

Ok you lost me there, I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that.

I’m sure that I’m misunderstanding you because you can’t possibly be saying what I think you are.

2 Likes
20

Is this in response to my last post?

1 Like