UPSB v4
Philosophy / Penspinning nowadays
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 03:24:07
*Puts on Obama's voice* Not that I am saying this to act like I'm an oldie, but I think even newbies can tell that penspinning has evolved tremendously since 2007 when the first official Pen Spinning World Tournament was organized. Many spinners admired Korean spinners due to their appealing originality, presentation, and the realization of how godly RSVP MX is(my opinion :P). People starting doing powertricks ever since Spinnerpeem won the 2009 World Tournament. Later on, penspinning has spread the world through the media, bringing more new spinners. Gatherings became more often, and people admired good spinners. In 2011, possibly the best world tournament in pen spinning history, s777 won the throne. However, since then pen spinning has not been much exciting as before. Conversation about, originality, style, judges, rule books are more often nowadays. Good spinners go inactive maybe even quit while new spinners lose their interest when they are satisfied doing powertricks. Fel2fram was one of the most modern influential spinner that could have changed pen spinning history, but unfortunately the throne was taken by Sutomo [JEB] in World Tournament 2013. In the end, World Cup 2014 was a great competition, but there was not much audience and there were more arguments making it less exciting than World Tournament 2013. Less audience is visible especially today, where the average rate of active members log-ins are below 50 (idk maybe less). I'm proud to say that I am passionate about this hobby, but I don't have the courage to say that I will be passionate for a long time. This sounds like as if I'm going to quit, but no worries, not yet unless for now. Now off to the question, [SIZE="4"]What should we do in order to bring that excitement back in pen spinning and bring more new pen spinners? [/SIZE] *Spams are welcome too, but I prefer serious suggestions
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 04:05:04
What can we do? What do humans do? Change, adapt, innovate. It seems to me there is generally new spinners who are more attracted to modding than spinning. Why? Maybe because everything has been done with pen spinning. Not to be offensive (I am going to be offensive anyway) the majority of members on UPSB are not very bright. Now before you start judging me and saying "You are also on this board, so you are also stupid" there are some intelligent people on here. You can tell by how they write their posts. But this is beside the point. My point is with so many people joining everyday internationally, there should be someone with new ideas. New members need to be more rooted into the community. If someone was really passionate about this they could implement new ideas. We used to have someone like that, Kam Inshort we need a second Kam, a second devout pen spinner. (All of this is my opinion by the way so please calm down if you get upset by my comments)
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 04:21:53
Zen wrote: What can we do? What do humans do? Change, adapt, innovate. Inshort we need a second Kam, a second devout pen spinner. (All of this is my opinion by the way so please calm down if you get upset by my comments)
I do agree with the fact that we need more active spinners with new ideas, and then that leads to another question; is there a limit to pen spinning? Also Kam brought penspinning itself to the media, not sure if there is anyone who can do more than that:P -
Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 04:22:05
i agree completely with @Zen s was more elaborate)
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 05:27:55
I totally agree that there needs to be is things that bring and maintain lots of hype and excitement in the penspinning community, idk what though, I'll think about it and see if I come up with anything. As for getting new people maintaining an interest I think that tutorials that are easy to find may help [SPOILER="Explanation of why I think tuts would help newbies maintain interest"] From my experiences, something that I think that might keep new people interested would be an easy to find set of video tutorials that can take someone from having no experience at all all the way to advanced. Another thing that would help would be an up to date and well written, in depth wiki so people can easily find out what things are. New spinners who try take the path that I did and relying on the wiki and youtube tuts will try come here and be missing a large amount of key terminology. E.G. I have no idea what the fuck a linkage is, the only thing I've really found about what they are is this page but that makes them sound exactly the same a combo. [SPOILER="My experiences that I'm talking about"]When I started psing I didn't really get into the whole interacting with people and community things. I've never really liked forums, they seem so lifeless. That aside, I kept an interest because I was really enjoying learning new tricks with great tutorials from ktrhin9. Eventually I ran out of tutorials and the wiki was fairly useless. It's rather outdated and is only good for learning to a point. Despite that I kept penspinning but not learning anything new just free styling in class and stuff like that. The thing I found fun was learning new tricks and progressing but when I got to a point where I couldn't find any good tutorials easily just stopped learning new things. I wasn't into it enough or good enough to innovate and . The only reason I go back into trying to improve and learn was the people at school asking me me to teach them the TA and their faces when they finally did it. It reminded me of what it was like when I first learnt the TA so I decided to visit the forum and see what would happen.[/SPOILER][/SPOILER]
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 06:18:51
Get kuma films to make another vid?
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 06:24:42
More gatherings, more activity on the boards, more promos,
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 06:47:28
ShadowParadox wrote: Get kuma films to make another vid?
We need more people to make really nice cinematic penspinning videos that are nice to watch like the kuma films one, having every video at peoples desks with a static camera is boring to non spinners, it's good for showing off tricks and stuff to other pen spinners but it aint gonna make people interested in psing. That's why kuma film's video has so many views, people other than pen spinners can enjoy it, unlike a lot of the ones that are just at people's desks. -
Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 09:56:30
IMO, we have to forcefully change the "STANDARDS" of the swaggots. I think penspinning already exceeded its limitations lel, since spinning pens with other parts of the body (like pokotun) is prohibited. IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO IMO
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 10:10:37
i think there needs to be more pen mods
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 11:07:09
Yamaguchi wrote: since spinning pens with other parts of the body (like pokotun) is prohibited.
prohibited?? am I missing something here? it's still pen spinning if it involves spinning a pen or pen mod using the body in some way isn't it? or is there some rule saying it's prohibited in things like the WC or whatever? -
Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 13:07:53
ok... so i think the best way to promote pen spinning is to do live events. be it tournaments, exhibitions, choreographed performances, or whatever... do something that will draw a crowd and grab at least some media attention. the internet is a convenient way to learn and communicate, but i believe that live events will create more of an immediate impact. i think it would be cool to include PS workshops in huge gatherings too. bring the pros next to the noobs to teach/assist them. yeah i also agree that a set of tutorials that at least most people can agree on would be nice. it should be something done more professionally and consistent too. maybe that sort of thing is not necessary for learning the trick, but people who see it will probably give it more consideration than some guy talking at his desk. (also, i think most of us are pretty tired of seeing the hundreds of TA/charge tutorials out there) i also feel like modding has lost its love in the past couple years... i think there still plenty of innovation and creativity to be put into that area. i still see some guys like taeko and sanchiu posting amazing stuff on soyp, but there used to be so much more. i think we should place some more emphasis on the non spinning side of the PS community. the same thing goes for editors and project organizers. erm... so i dont think i answered the question at all... just gave some of my half assed ideas.
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 14:47:18
OK! U guys want a solution. U wanna promote pen spinning in a easy way?! Well i, ShadowParadox, have an answer! This is so easy u wont believe it when u try it, u'll be dumbfounded that no one else has tried it before. And you'll wonder why u never thought of such a simple and surefire way of promoting pen spinning! U wanna know what it is? Well here you go :
see that wasnt so hard after all...was it?.... Also....why do we need more mods?! There are already hundreds maybe even thousands of mods out there already. Even 100 is enough for 1 spinner. Pen spinning isnt about the mods its about the spinning. A piano play isnt defined by the piano he uses its his skill and what he plays which is what makes him good. How will mods make pen SPINNING bigger?!Spoiler
1. You go outside to a street or town where their are lots of people 2. U start pen spinning in public. 3. People watch u, they like? They go home. Google pen spinning and Voila new spinners! -
Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 15:07:05
No i think you guys are missing the point, it is not about increasing [B]how many[/B] members but the [B]quality[/B] of new members that we get. Now back when it was only Kam and a couple of other guys (Kondoh) Kam needed more people to spin, so he made UPSB and the collab with PDS, to [B]spread[/B] pen spinning. But times have changed. Now we have a surplus of members. Now we can focus on increasing pen spinning. Honestly i think the community is focused on Pen mods, which i must say is not bad, but it is not good either. People make mods, but don't spin them. Why? Why do that, what is the point of modding it and then not spinning? If are going to break a pen(who's purpose is to write) and make it into a mod (who's purpose is to to spin) and you don't spin, you are wasting the pens. Modding has become another sport of it's own, along with collecting. (back on topic) i think new members are more interested in making mods than they are spinning and improving themselves. Now i plan on running the numbers with a small census with some new members later on, i will tell you guys what the statistics are. But why? Because, modding is easier then spinning. If it is easier, it is more enjoyable. So we need to make spinning easier. i agree that making quality videos, maybe by a committee is a good idea. But if we make it easier, and by easier i mean easier to learn, (which it already is) then we have the same problem. New members, nowadays can learn to their hearts content and then they can quit when they are satisfied. If we make learning tricks easier, we will lose more member, i think. Now the solution i propose is to make spinning harder. We have a surplus of members now. People are joining everyday for the most part. But they are not being rooted in the community. The community may be another problem. (But most of the fault goes to the new members who can't read the rules :p) Think of it like a [B]screening process[/B] the harder the process, the better men you are going to get as a result. If you make it easier, anyone can get in. Comments?
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 15:27:08
''while new spinners lose their interest when they are satisfied doing powertricks.'' LEAVE POWER TRICKS ALONEEEE
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 16:16:39
I HAVE SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE! (that's a line from 'Girls', which should bring my credibility into question right from the off, but here we go…) I've been on here since Jan this year - first as a curiosity for my blog, but now just as a spinner. So here are my thoughts on what may help: 1) on the media front - I have pen spinning now as one of those subjects that I consider to be 'in my locker', so if I find the right publication at the right time, I will defo try to get something in the UK national media about it. I know there aren't many of us Brits on here, so I hope I can do that. That takes time though. 2) I think when you start spinning, you rely so heavily on YouTube vids. I wonder if there is a bit of a dearth of vids for the mid-range beginners: For absolute beginners, it's brilliant. Loads of great beginner tutorials from great teachers (like Shoeman6 and SuperVValrus) covering almost every trick there is. Once you reach the point where you can do full 20sec combos, powertricks and everything, it's brilliant too - there are so many great vids to watch and so many styles to admire. In between the two?… I'm not so sure. If you've only just started to string a few tricks together into mini-linkages, what are you to think when you look at the standard of the recent beginners tournament? From the original post, it seems like there are a lot of new spinners who get involved and then give up too quickly. I wonder if they're getting lost in that middle-beginner gap (if it does exist), meaning that new spinners can't get creative and develop their own styles early enough (which is the most enjoyable bit, no?). There are two 'simple PS linkages' vids from SuperVValrus that I love, because they're right in that middle-beginner ground - they show just how creative you can be with just three or four fairly simple tricks strung together. I'd love to see more of those. Right now, I can't do full combos yet. But I've learned the majority of individual tricks and can string some linkages together. But it seems like a huge leap from here to the standard of the beginner tournaments. I could be wrong, but I wonder if that gap is where many newbies lose interest. I won't tho, 'cos it's fun and I'm stubborn. :) mpc
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 18:36:56
I think Zen, nv16 and Reason made some great points. I especially like Reason's idea of doing live events. As nv16 said, there's too much desks. Maybe it could deter someone intrested in spinning because to people who arent already into it, it doesnt look that intresting. Why do you think WT videos dont have more than 20k views and Kuma has over 2 million? That seems to have worked. Also what if people see spinning and think this is some "impossible stuff only asians can do", maybe if we portray spinning as something everyone can do given enough effort and time? As far as quality goes, i think many of the top spinners started just like the spinners you would call average, either saw it on youtube or got introduced into it by a friend, they did pretty much what everyone does yet somehow rose above the rest. They didnt receive some special training in the mountains of Nepal, its just who they are got them to where they are. I guess what im trying to say is you dont really force out a great spinner, they just kinda become that on their own by doing what they do, either because of their ideas, approach, or whatnot. imo
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 18:50:48
I feel like a reason people loose interest in improving the quality of spinning is because they reach a purgatory stage of spinning, where they feel like they can't progress in their skill
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 18:56:22
Not sure there's really anything to do about it. Just stay involved and excited about it. Perhaps pen spinning is just maturing. Less discussion doesn't mean it's any less exciting. It's still growing pretty well in Asia if I'm not mistaken. Just keep on keeping on :). I stopped spinning because it hurt my hands, but I still love the art as much as ever. Spinning in public helps. I know a significant factor for why I got into spinning was because I got my friends into it as well.
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Date: Sun, Jul 20 2014 23:46:01
In a nutshell, have a more active community.
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Date: Mon, Jul 21 2014 00:09:26
Have more pen spinning gatherings perhaps?
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Date: Mon, Jul 21 2014 00:30:59
MPC wrote: I HAVE SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE! (that's a line from 'Girls', which should bring my credibility into question right from the off, but here we go…) I've been on here since Jan this year - first as a curiosity for my blog, but now just as a spinner. So here are my thoughts on what may help: 1) on the media front - I have pen spinning now as one of those subjects that I consider to be 'in my locker', so if I find the right publication at the right time, I will defo try to get something in the UK national media about it. I know there aren't many of us Brits on here, so I hope I can do that. That takes time though. 2) I think when you start spinning, you rely so heavily on YouTube vids. I wonder if there is a bit of a dearth of vids for the mid-range beginners: For absolute beginners, it's brilliant. Loads of great beginner tutorials from great teachers (like Shoeman6 and SuperVValrus) covering almost every trick there is. Once you reach the point where you can do full 20sec combos, powertricks and everything, it's brilliant too - there are so many great vids to watch and so many styles to admire. In between the two?… I'm not so sure. If you've only just started to string a few tricks together into mini-linkages, what are you to think when you look at the standard of the recent beginners tournament? From the original post, it seems like there are a lot of new spinners who get involved and then give up too quickly. I wonder if they're getting lost in that middle-beginner gap (if it does exist), meaning that new spinners can't get creative and develop their own styles early enough (which is the most enjoyable bit, no?). There are two 'simple PS linkages' vids from SuperVValrus that I love, because they're right in that middle-beginner ground - they show just how creative you can be with just three or four fairly simple tricks strung together. I'd love to see more of those. Right now, I can't do full combos yet. But I've learned the majority of individual tricks and can string some linkages together. But it seems like a huge leap from here to the standard of the beginner tournaments. I could be wrong, but I wonder if that gap is where many newbies lose interest. I won't tho, 'cos it's fun and I'm stubborn. :) mpc
The gap between beginner and advanced is where you have to learn for yourself becauss linkages are created and not spoonfed. There's a huge dedication gap also between peopls that learn some tricks and people that make it a primary flcus. -
Date: Mon, Jul 21 2014 02:21:50
I think there's a lack of filming, exchange, and appreciation of pen spinning videos on upsb. Talking and discussing general things about pen spinning is alright, but the only way to really get into pen spinning is by filming videos, logging your journey in becoming a better spinner, admiring the works of other spinners. Perhaps if there was some way to encourage beginners to film videos and share their videos, we could see a general rise in enthusiasm for pen spinning.
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Date: Mon, Jul 21 2014 04:00:37
MPC wrote: I HAVE SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE! (that's a line from 'Girls', which should bring my credibility into question right from the off, but here we go…) I've been on here since Jan this year - first as a curiosity for my blog, but now just as a spinner. So here are my thoughts on what may help: 1) on the media front - I have pen spinning now as one of those subjects that I consider to be 'in my locker', so if I find the right publication at the right time, I will defo try to get something in the UK national media about it. I know there aren't many of us Brits on here, so I hope I can do that. That takes time though. 2) I think when you start spinning, you rely so heavily on YouTube vids. I wonder if there is a bit of a dearth of vids for the mid-range beginners: For absolute beginners, it's brilliant. Loads of great beginner tutorials from great teachers (like Shoeman6 and SuperVValrus) covering almost every trick there is. Once you reach the point where you can do full 20sec combos, powertricks and everything, it's brilliant too - there are so many great vids to watch and so many styles to admire. In between the two?… I'm not so sure. If you've only just started to string a few tricks together into mini-linkages, what are you to think when you look at the standard of the recent beginners tournament? From the original post, it seems like there are a lot of new spinners who get involved and then give up too quickly. I wonder if they're getting lost in that middle-beginner gap (if it does exist), meaning that new spinners can't get creative and develop their own styles early enough (which is the most enjoyable bit, no?). There are two 'simple PS linkages' vids from SuperVValrus that I love, because they're right in that middle-beginner ground - they show just how creative you can be with just three or four fairly simple tricks strung together. I'd love to see more of those. Right now, I can't do full combos yet. But I've learned the majority of individual tricks and can string some linkages together. But it seems like a huge leap from here to the standard of the beginner tournaments. I could be wrong, but I wonder if that gap is where many newbies lose interest. I won't tho, 'cos it's fun and I'm stubborn. :) mpc
You bring up a good point, in between basics and advanced learning linkages is where all the fun's at. There used to be some great resources for simple linkages but they aren't as prevalent anymore. Hmm... -
Date: Mon, Jul 21 2014 06:24:30
@Ceru Seiyu I agree that straight-up copying other spinners' linkages would be pointless and boring, but I don't think anyone really does that, do they? I think it's the same as anything creative - you watch other peoples' work for inspiration, then you take little bits from everywhere and adapt it to your own style. My point was that perhaps there isn't enough of this for mid-range beginners. Example - when I didn't know any links at at, I watched SuperVValrus's 'simple beginner combo' tutorial. I started learning that, but I never actually learned his combo in full because I started going off on tangents. I learned the first bit, and then thought "actually, I'd rather lead into this other trick next," and "oh, that bit would work really well with this other thing", which lead me to creating a totally different linkage of my own, and so on… Same with this vid I mentioned before - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCxjvlYyQ2c&feature=youtu.be - I've watched it loads and used it to practice a lot. Despite that, I couldn't actually imitate any one of these links in full, because there was no point learning them in full - they belong to someone else and they don't match my style. But I now have loads of little links of my own, built from the maybe 10 or 15 percent percent of this vid that sparked littles idea for me which grew into something new. So yeah, I wish there were more vids like this. It would give me a greater pool to take inspiration from and allow me to be more creative. :) mpc
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Date: Tue, Jul 22 2014 05:24:03
it will go all rocking if legends start coming online and inspire the beginners!
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Date: Tue, Jul 22 2014 16:07:02
Alright, so I think penspinning has come very far, and more than innovate penspinnng even farther, I would like to see the way everyone sees penspinning to be innovated.
nv16 wrote: We need more people to make really nice cinematic penspinning videos that are nice to watch like the kuma films one, having every video at peoples desks with a static camera is boring to non spinners, it's good for showing off tricks and stuff to other pen spinners but it aint gonna make people interested in psing. That's why kuma film's video has so many views, people other than pen spinners can enjoy it, unlike a lot of the ones that are just at people's desks.
This is what I'm getting at, I completely agree with nv16. For me personally, regular promos and collabs are really stale and kind of boring sometimes. Dudes spinning, maybe one or two that stand out, we see this in a lot of the collabs. Overall its very dull. As nv also said, nice cinematic videos. For example The Spinstick promo . What I really enjoyed about this video was some of the cinematic shots that were in there and most importantly, the guys are walking around. They're not sitting at a desk spinning. So what I want to do, is make some penspinning promos, but with more cinematic shots and overall more interesting. Now, I intend for the spinning in these promos to be somewhere outdoors or just somewhere cool, nice, interesting, etc. For example; SuperVValrus's 200 sub Special What stood out here was the location of where it was filmed and some of the shots of the location that added a nice atmosphere to the video. Alright so that's sort of my idea, and its a project that I would like to take forward in the future. Any thoughts? Thanks guys :) -
Date: Tue, Jul 22 2014 18:44:45
Dern Goid wrote: Alright, so I think penspinning has come very far, and more than innovate penspinnng even farther, I would like to see the way everyone sees penspinning to be innovated. This is what I'm getting at, I completely agree with nv16. For me personally, regular promos and collabs are really stale and kind of boring sometimes. Dudes spinning, maybe one or two that stand out, we see this in a lot of the collabs. Overall its very dull. As nv also said, nice cinematic videos. For example The Spinstick promo . What I really enjoyed about this video was some of the cinematic shots that were in there and most importantly, the guys are walking around. They're not sitting at a desk spinning. So what I want to do, is make some penspinning promos, but with more cinematic shots and overall more interesting. Now, I intend for the spinning in these promos to be somewhere outdoors or just somewhere cool, nice, interesting, etc. For example; SuperVValrus's 200 sub Special What stood out here was the location of where it was filmed and some of the shots of the location that added a nice atmosphere to the video. Alright so that's sort of my idea, and its a project that I would like to take forward in the future. Any thoughts? Thanks guys :)
It is a good idea, in getting people interested in pen spinning, but we really just want them to stay in the community. The bigger our community the more ideas and new perspectives we have, it won't mean anything if we have members interested and then the community is shit and they are no longer interested. UPSB is active, but it is not THAT active. The people who come on are the regulars. The moderators and some other guys. -
Date: Wed, Jul 23 2014 04:07:00
I was very active back on the last version of UPSB when i was a freshman and sophmore in highschool (I started in middle school and have just now gotten back into it during my first year at college), and I must say UPSB, and spinning in general seems different. Its strange that none of my old friends are active anymore. It seems that focused penspinning is not a hobby that can last ones whole life. ON another note, back when I stopped quit UPSB and stopped caring about spinning, it seemed like the future was so bright for penspinning. I went to a gathering with 20+ people! Kam had a deal with a toy company to sell penspinning toys at stores! There were a couple guys trying to make legit brands of spinning sticks/pens! I come back now, and none of that ever actually worked out, nothing ever caught on with the mainstream. My best idea as to how to make penspinning more popular is to rebrand itself alittle. Look at the popularity of hooping recently. Has anyone ever gone to a rave an gotten a light show? I go to school in Colorado and half my friends casually practice some sort of manipulative art/slackline or do something thats essentially the same thing as penspinning, practicing and training your body to be better at one specific activity.