Yeah I don’t really think letting the dawgs out is gonna let anyone move faster. I was goofing because I assumed Mark was also goofing. It is admittedly hard to pick up on that via text on the internet and I often miss language nuances reading text also. There could be an argument that there is some benefit to going barefoot like players do choose to do that and I assume they have a reason for it. I wouldn’t want to make that argument though…maybe similar to gloves or no gloves where either option can be valid.
I think the question is more about what is a sport and that definition is definitely contested like chess and esports are considered sports as well as like motor sports. I don’t really agree with all those bc I feel like there has to be some sort if physicality so the purely mental like chess is out of my definition and Yoyo definitely had some sort of physicality so it aligns w my definition of what a sport is. I am not the rules police though like if you think yoyo is not a sport, that’s cool. I think that is wrong but that’s okay like I understand people are wrong about things and accept that.
This conversation has happened, with pretty much identical arguments on all sides, every few years since 1996. Just some perspective.
In 2016 and 2019 I had a professional crew filming HD, multiple angles, broadcast quality titles, etc. Yoyo players worldwide complained that they wanted a static, head-on shot for everything so they could just learn the tricks.
In 2019 people complained for the entire duration of the event about the film crew that was there shooting for the Netflix “We Are The Champions” documentary on the contest.
What the community wants yoyoing to be & look like has always been at odds with what the general public wants to see and what producers and people with the money to make this happen want it to be and look like. Those two things have not come closer to each other in the 29 years I’ve been doing this. I’m not saying they never will, I’m just saying it’s going to take a lot more than what anyone is doing now.
Aight cool I gotchu and think it is probably true that no matter how well yoyo is packaged for the general public’s consumption, it still won’t be as interesting to them as it is to the community here already. I also don’t think it would be good or realistic for yoyo players to have to comply with wada drug testing to compete and that would be necessary for yoyo to be an olympic sport. So after learning that, I am not trying to push the idea any more really. I still do think yoyo in the Olympics would be cool and good for yoyo but yeah
