I posted daily from 05-2010 on both YYN and another forum(wont mention since it is another stores forum).
I come here every now and then pretty much just to feel the nostalgia of going to a yoyo forum haha, here are some of the reasons I don’t use the forum as much anymore.
I’ve made so many friends in yoyoing through the years that I’d rather just talk to them through facebook or skype instead of going to the forum.
Most people on the forums are mostly interested in yoyos, not yoyo tricks.
Back in the day I would watch every single video posted on the forums. Now I just go through #trickcircle on instagram and see stuff shared on facebook.
Messagebox full of “when is Yeti coming out?”,“can I buy a puffin from you” and other fan mail can get a bit overwhelming.
I have a full-time job running a pizza restaurant working 200+hours a month and spend most of my free time yoyoing, watching a little anime and meeting friends. So yeah I don’t have as much times for forums.
sorry to hijack again… but palli has a pizza place?.. if this is true i must go. he is one of the few people i like on the clyw team.
anyway my now that i think of it the fanmail could get a little intense… the clyw fanboys sometimes are much more then a roving pack of yoniverous animals waiting for the next yeti release, which seems to never happen. the yyf fanclub isn’t much better, but at least their favorite yoyos usually make constant releases.
@alecto I’m not the owner but I am a store manager of one of the biggest Dominos in the world. Icelandic people actually eat the most pizza per capita in the world…
Wahey! Thanks for the insight Palli, I was hoping to get your opinion on the matter.
I didn’t realise that things actually got this bad. I could imagine that sponsored players may get a few PMs with questions here and there, but I had no idea that you’re getting swamped with questions like this on the daily. I can understand that this must get pretty frustrating.
Went to Reykjavík last year, had a great time indeed. I ordered Dominos as well, and was overwhelmed with happiness when I found out that you guys had both KFC and Taco bell from the same restaurant.
Iceland is definitely the most bizarre place I’ve ever been to (graffiti everywhere, no trees, no grass… no people… the ‘zoo’ has nothing but farm animals…), but it’s one of my favourite places that I’ve been because of it’s sheer quirkiness. Probably going to go back at some point within the next year, so I’ll hit up all the Hafnarfjörður Domino shops asking people when the Yeti’s are coming out.
See I don’t have instagram so I don’t really understand the #trickcircle buzz. Whenever I’ve gone on there it seems to be mostly younger kids spamming multiple videos of themselves doing basic-ish tricks filmed in poor quality/lighting. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, in fact it’s great that newer players can share their ideas… however I was led to believe that there was more to it than that.
Is there a way of filtering specific videos from specific players? Or do you just flick through until you see a name you recognise?
Honestly, it’s because they have all moved to facebook/dropped off the earth. There are just too many kids here, and also, a lot of people feel the rules are too much. I don’t come here often anymore, because usually the front page is usually like this.
[b]MOVED: how do i put a yoyo on a string-by jhb8426
when r yetis out-by zachgormleyfan757
i sure do dislike YYF-by clywisdabest
Quality Post-by paul dang[/b]
It just has become a place where quality content is not very abundant. Now, I only comment on a few threads a month, use the B/S/T, and buy from the store.
Also, I don’t mean anything bad about CLYW, it’s just that sometimes the hype gets to be too much, lol. CLYW makes a lot of my favorite throws.
Disclaimer: this is all generalization. I know lots of young adults who are just awesome.
Disclaimer out of the way, only young adults seem to complain about the “kids”. They’re breaking free of that era of their lives and don’t like to be dragged back down into it. Until later, when you realize that kids are people, too. The level of communication and critical thinking is highly variable (some kids are amazing; better communicators and thinkers than many of the adults… but some are less so). But they’re people. A lot of awesome people.
So yeah. Kids enjoy interacting with kids, peers, and adults. Adults enjoy sharing this hobby with whoever else in the world cares about it. A certain kind of young adult tends to want to be in an exclusive club of some sort. One that I am well past understanding or caring about.
A great many of the “pros” are young adults. And if they are at just that particular stage of their lives, they may be happy to be in their circle of peers and not really want to (or need to) venture forth and have a whole bunch of dialogues with people who bore them… ie. kids and old farts.
I personally like hearing from any yoyoer on the forum who has been throwing for years. They don’t have to necessarily be 'pros’to know a lot about yoyos.
I read all the pages Uffff…
But really i think people have grown up to not be interested in what they are throwing but what their tricks are like and if they are good or not. I have grown up to that and really i dont care about the throws anymroe i just try to come up with the most effective tricks. As you can see by the number of my posts i dont visit here often but i just look at the forum from time to time… And tbh i got bored of all those posts asking what yoyo is good or that certain company is bad… Pros just dont care about that kind of stuff.
Sorry if this makes no sense my had to throw in my opinion in here .
Ehhh…I get it, but I don’t really think that’s all it. As you can imagine, I think my own post hits closer to the mark.
Certain competitors don’t care about gear, the same as certain amateurs don’t. Certain competitors are gear-heads just like the rest of us. You can see it in their collections and in the way they talk about what went into the design of their signature yoyos. If they didn’t care much, they probably wouldn’t have a signature yoyo (I suspect Jason Lee, for example, never cared that much about gear). On Facebook you see competitors talking about gear all the time. Being a sponsored yoyoer doesn’t turn off that side of you if you’re an enthusiast. But it might dampen it somewhat if you tend to stay “faithful” to the brand you’re representing. (in quotation marks because I don’t think companies force sponsored yoyoers to not OWN other yoyos, just that they shouldn’t use them in public-facing scenarios).
So that’s gear.
In terms of talk… this forum is full of all kinds of talk. Yes, there’s gear talk, but there’s also talk about tricks. Lots of it. Trick theory, help with particular tricks, sharing self-composed tricks. Lots of trick talk. A perfect fit for sponsored players that don’t care about gear. Ignore the gear talk, stay for the trick talk!
But they don’t, for the most part. So what else is there?
The culture. There’s the aspect I mentioned-- young adult players want to spend time soaking up the discourse of their peers. They don’t want to help a new player land Magic Drop, they want to study each other and feel immersed in what is “breaking new ground”. It’s very inward-looking, or so it seems to an old fart who’s not in that circle. But then there’s also culture on a more global scale. Vasek seems like the kind of guy who can relate to players of all ages, and would be a willing teacher of many. He has an interest in gear to a certain level. But he’s not first-language English and already has lots of in-person yoyo talk (and mentoring) with the thriving Czech scene. Being a regular here would require going outside of a culture that is already meeting his needs in the yoyo world.
So yeah. It’s a culture thing, one way or another.
i’d like to reiterate that i think the biggest reason revolves around what forums are designed for in the first place. online forums are for making connections with people regarding shared interests or passions. when you’ve been yo-yoing (and on related forums) for a decade or more, YOU HAVE THOSE CONNECTIONS IN PLACE.
if player x or y wants to chat about yo-yoing, the path of least resistance is to head to a forum where dozens of interested individuals are ready and willing. if an experienced pro feels like doing so (and honestly, most pro’s have talked yo-yoing TO DEATH, themselves, over the course of their own development), they’ll look at their list of contacts and text one of the friends they’ve made through yo-yoing. that’s what i do, anyway. i DO check out the forums to try and keep up with topics yo-yo players find interesting/important. but if i want to “connect with another yo-yoer”, i’d rather just go with a known entity and call or text one of the friends i’ve made through dozens of contests/parties/road-trips/sessions/etc. it’s not so much that i hit up those guys to talk about yo-yoing. it’s more that i hit them up to talk about what’s going on in our lives, and most of my best friends are, at this point, yo-yo players. so seeking out yo-yo players online to satisfy a need to talk about yo-yoing can feel redundant (and, for reasons already established, really tiring).
edit: i’d like to note that i’m not suggesting that players who aren’t pros don’t have other yo-yo connections to draw from - just that as your experience in the yo-yo world increases, those connections increase, and the need for a mechanism to augment them falls away.
I don’t have other yoyo connections. I made my initial connections here on this very forum. Most of my enduring yoyo connections are still not “in person” but they have migrated to Facebook and Facebook Messenger in particular (because I can have near-realtime conversations vs. fully asynchronous conversations here).
Yet I still come here because I have things to share and things to talk about, and YYE peeps are “my” peeps. If my peeps were elsewhere, I would probably be elsewhere, too. Some folks did notice a recent slowdown in my activity, and I’m sure it relates to getting “all full up” in Messenger chats.
Until later, when you realize that kids are people, too. The level of communication and critical thinking is highly variable (some kids are amazing; better communicators and thinkers than many of the adults… but some are less so). But they’re people. A lot of awesome people.