was talking to Ettore from BIST and just found out he have left the community and quit yoyo.
i only learn about this awhile ago. probably already old news to some players, but i've always wonder how come there's no updates from Ettore in FB. and he link me to this article, and interview he had with asyoyo.it, an Italian yoyo site. he mention about why he left the scene, for those who are interested, i've copied and paste the translated version by the site, but some parts aren't translated because they couldn't figure out how to put it in english or something i think.
i only learn about this awhile ago. probably already old news to some players, but i've always wonder how come there's no updates from Ettore in FB. and he link me to this article, and interview he had with asyoyo.it, an Italian yoyo site. he mention about why he left the scene, for those who are interested, i've copied and paste the translated version by the site, but some parts aren't translated because they couldn't figure out how to put it in english or something i think.
Is it true that you have decided to leave the yoyo world, if yes why?
Yes, I would say that it is true, the reasons are many.
Can you tell us the reasons?
Of course! You know that when I can I always tell the truth.
The spark that lit the fire was a tv transmission where there were two guests that were yoyoing.
Two years ago, they imposed that I went on TV wearing the italian yoyo association logo, while these two, this year, presented themselves with logos of another manufacturer without anyone saying anything.
I need to highlight that I do not have a problem with the manufacturer, or with the guys, but with the current attitude, where if B!ST does something it does it because it is evil, but if someone else does it, they probably did it because they have a large and good heart. I have (some Italian expression that involves ripped balls)!
I omit that one of these guys received a very profitable offer to be sponsored by me and he refused, saying 'I am tied to a friendly rapport with the manufacturer that sponsors me'. You can imagine my face when I saw him go on stage sponsored by another manufacturer.
Other reasons?
When I was growing up they taught me about meritocracy, if you are good you will be awarded, but in the yoyoing world it is the opposite, just think that who sells the most yoyos in the world is the one that makes them the worst! I am the only one in the world that thinks about a yoyo and then creates it, all the others randomly mess about with a shape and then, without knowing what they are doing, try and modify the shape and weight in order to make it play decently.
It is a bit like buying meat and then trying to give it the taste of a blueberry cake. Other than being complicated, it becomes idiotic proceeding like this.
Instead I buy blueberries, eggs and flour and I prepare my a (swearing) cake.
Only a few Japanese make yoyos with the same system that I do, but they are still far away from understanding the logics of yoyos that I have understood. The japanese still remain unbeatable.
So you think that the Japanese are the best in this field?
Absolutely! They are the only ones that understand yoyoing as a sport, with a lot of practice and study, the rest of the world still sees it as a game/toy, but it is not like this, an athletic movement is still an athletic movement, little matters if you are talking about jumping high or launching an arrow.
Are they also the best in construction?
Yes, without a doubt! They are they best manufacturers in the world, for creativity and tech! They are they only ones at the mod contest to present mods worth mentioning.
But you beat them?
Of course, but I do not consider myself from this world, to engage me, with decent judges, there should be a universal contest.
Will you not at least compete at the 2011 mod contest?
No, after what happened in the last two years.
What happened?
In 2009 I took the stradivari, and I lost by 2 points to a simply idiotic yoyo, the judges said that the yoyo was a very good player and it was this quality that made it win.
In light of this in 2010 I took the bistocracy, a yoyo concept designed to be an amazing player, infact I received the highest points for playability in the history of the WYYC mod contest, 50 out of 50.
I won by one point, the judges told me that the second place yoyo have a very complex concept.
Therefore I understand that if I bring a yoyo with a complex concept, the playability is fundamental and if i bring a good player then the concept is fundamental. I also did not like the way they judged the other yoyos of my team, there were incredible yoyos, like the one of Andrea Mascheroni, a comeptizione super evo III, covered in leather by hand, as though it was a baseball, and it got 10th place which really seemed unfair. Other yoyos, that were really banal, took higher places, without, to my understanding, deserving it. One of those was a butterfly that was transformed into an imperial. Nobody asked themselves it was of any worth doing it the other way round.
Also because I thought that the idea of the mod contest was that of modifying a yoyo in order to improve it, not ruin it. It is like going to a car tuning contest and someone presended a rally car transformed into a city car. Easy and stupid!
So you think that they have not truly understood the true value of the Bistocracy?
No, they have not understood it, also because the judges at worlds are not, in my opinion, capable of judging mods too complicated, they limit themselves to rewarding yoyo-clown, with lights and sounds, they do not understand what kind of work and ingenuity is needed to transform a stock yoyo into a word class yoyo. If it had not been for Frank difeo among the judges, the only technical among them, I would never have one.
Do you think that they are wrongly judging the idea of a 'mod'?
Yes, I have always thought of the mod contest as the maximum expression of mods, whilst the best works that I saw in the past years are 'prototypes', not 'mods'.
They say that you have already finished your project for the 2011 mod contest.
It is true, it is an absurd concept, I could bring it to life in less than 3 months because I have already done all the calculations, but I consider myself a coherent person, and I do not consider the the judges capable of judging me, I will not compete, this is what I have decided.
Although your criticisms, you have won four medals in two years, aren't you complaining for nothing?
Honestly, they still have to give me 3 of the 4 medals, the WYYC organiser promised to ship them to me as soon as possible, but a year later and I still have not received anything. Thanks Greg, I don't need them now, I made a mould and made them myself.
Anyway, winning or losing has little importance, I did not make those yoyos for others but to demonstrate to myself that I could make them. And for this I used a common yoyo, I wanted to show that I could win (have no idea what is on here...)
So that is how it happened?
Yes, but it wasn't worth much, showing the world to be the best did not save it from it's stupidity.
In what sense?
What i mean is, in 2010 I publicly displayed 10s of extraordinary mods, that might only be understood in a few years, but kids continue to buy hyped up rubbish. I thought that showing the world that I was the best yoyo builder would have been enough to push them to buy yoyos that I produced. I could build a yoyo that travels in time if I had money and resources but I cannot transform idiots into geniuses.
Maybe you are not selling enough because your yoyos are 'simple' in respect to your mods?
I do not think it is because of this. Take for example the centauro tm! It is the yoyo that took the most effort, and in my opinion was the most innovative yoyo with a playable shape in the last 40 years. I presented it and no one blinked an eye to it, now a few years down the road it has been cloned by all the yoyo producers. Prototyping it was not simple or economic, in spite of this people still prefered to buy clones instead of the original. For this reason I have not produced any more yoyos with innovative shapes, but I limited myself to optimising the butterfly shape.
An example is the Pegasus, innovative shape for it's time, highly playable, built in only 37 examples and then?
And then?
I have to see little kids that slave to buy their umpteenth splashed piece of crap because 'there are only 500 of these'. Come on, enough (another italian word I cannot translate...)!
Therefore it is because of these reasons that you have decided to quit? Do you think you have given enough?
Yes and no, it is because of these reasons that I have decided to quit, but I have 10s of projects to bring to live, but I fear that they will only remain projects.
Like the futuro?
Yes, like the futuro, a yoyo with a negative shape, an ingenious object in the middle of 100s of yoyos that copy each other. Unfortunately if people keep on buying Duncan and yyf the future wil be full of duncan and yyf.
On the subject of yyf and the futuro, recently yyf ben showed the avantgard, and he did it as though he had created the yoyo of the century, unfortunetly they understood that is a yoyo with the same principle feature as the furuto and the centauro magituto 4.
Unfortunately these projects go back further than 1 year, but if we think about it on the stradivari I utilised a negative shape to risolve the problems of weight balance due to the excessive milling of the centre of the body.
It's annoying, that i did not gain anything from all of these ideas, to see that there is who, besides taking them in order to obtain personal gain, is not disturbed not even to give credit to who “gave” them the umpteenth idea in order to make money.
And what is the future of yoyoing?
Good question! I believe that we are heading towards the search for new shapes to make as much money as possible, no one is concentrating on playability, regarding play, it pleases me to see the judges rewarding innovation and flow, whilst there was a period in which only speed was rewarded.
Who will win the 2011 mod contest?
Almost without a doubt, it will be someone Japanese from team shinobu, I only know one modder capable of beating the Japanese, but as I already said, I do not mod yoyos anymore.
Yes, I would say that it is true, the reasons are many.
Can you tell us the reasons?
Of course! You know that when I can I always tell the truth.
The spark that lit the fire was a tv transmission where there were two guests that were yoyoing.
Two years ago, they imposed that I went on TV wearing the italian yoyo association logo, while these two, this year, presented themselves with logos of another manufacturer without anyone saying anything.
I need to highlight that I do not have a problem with the manufacturer, or with the guys, but with the current attitude, where if B!ST does something it does it because it is evil, but if someone else does it, they probably did it because they have a large and good heart. I have (some Italian expression that involves ripped balls)!
I omit that one of these guys received a very profitable offer to be sponsored by me and he refused, saying 'I am tied to a friendly rapport with the manufacturer that sponsors me'. You can imagine my face when I saw him go on stage sponsored by another manufacturer.
Other reasons?
When I was growing up they taught me about meritocracy, if you are good you will be awarded, but in the yoyoing world it is the opposite, just think that who sells the most yoyos in the world is the one that makes them the worst! I am the only one in the world that thinks about a yoyo and then creates it, all the others randomly mess about with a shape and then, without knowing what they are doing, try and modify the shape and weight in order to make it play decently.
It is a bit like buying meat and then trying to give it the taste of a blueberry cake. Other than being complicated, it becomes idiotic proceeding like this.
Instead I buy blueberries, eggs and flour and I prepare my a (swearing) cake.
Only a few Japanese make yoyos with the same system that I do, but they are still far away from understanding the logics of yoyos that I have understood. The japanese still remain unbeatable.
So you think that the Japanese are the best in this field?
Absolutely! They are the only ones that understand yoyoing as a sport, with a lot of practice and study, the rest of the world still sees it as a game/toy, but it is not like this, an athletic movement is still an athletic movement, little matters if you are talking about jumping high or launching an arrow.
Are they also the best in construction?
Yes, without a doubt! They are they best manufacturers in the world, for creativity and tech! They are they only ones at the mod contest to present mods worth mentioning.
But you beat them?
Of course, but I do not consider myself from this world, to engage me, with decent judges, there should be a universal contest.
Will you not at least compete at the 2011 mod contest?
No, after what happened in the last two years.
What happened?
In 2009 I took the stradivari, and I lost by 2 points to a simply idiotic yoyo, the judges said that the yoyo was a very good player and it was this quality that made it win.
In light of this in 2010 I took the bistocracy, a yoyo concept designed to be an amazing player, infact I received the highest points for playability in the history of the WYYC mod contest, 50 out of 50.
I won by one point, the judges told me that the second place yoyo have a very complex concept.
Therefore I understand that if I bring a yoyo with a complex concept, the playability is fundamental and if i bring a good player then the concept is fundamental. I also did not like the way they judged the other yoyos of my team, there were incredible yoyos, like the one of Andrea Mascheroni, a comeptizione super evo III, covered in leather by hand, as though it was a baseball, and it got 10th place which really seemed unfair. Other yoyos, that were really banal, took higher places, without, to my understanding, deserving it. One of those was a butterfly that was transformed into an imperial. Nobody asked themselves it was of any worth doing it the other way round.
Also because I thought that the idea of the mod contest was that of modifying a yoyo in order to improve it, not ruin it. It is like going to a car tuning contest and someone presended a rally car transformed into a city car. Easy and stupid!
So you think that they have not truly understood the true value of the Bistocracy?
No, they have not understood it, also because the judges at worlds are not, in my opinion, capable of judging mods too complicated, they limit themselves to rewarding yoyo-clown, with lights and sounds, they do not understand what kind of work and ingenuity is needed to transform a stock yoyo into a word class yoyo. If it had not been for Frank difeo among the judges, the only technical among them, I would never have one.
Do you think that they are wrongly judging the idea of a 'mod'?
Yes, I have always thought of the mod contest as the maximum expression of mods, whilst the best works that I saw in the past years are 'prototypes', not 'mods'.
They say that you have already finished your project for the 2011 mod contest.
It is true, it is an absurd concept, I could bring it to life in less than 3 months because I have already done all the calculations, but I consider myself a coherent person, and I do not consider the the judges capable of judging me, I will not compete, this is what I have decided.
Although your criticisms, you have won four medals in two years, aren't you complaining for nothing?
Honestly, they still have to give me 3 of the 4 medals, the WYYC organiser promised to ship them to me as soon as possible, but a year later and I still have not received anything. Thanks Greg, I don't need them now, I made a mould and made them myself.
Anyway, winning or losing has little importance, I did not make those yoyos for others but to demonstrate to myself that I could make them. And for this I used a common yoyo, I wanted to show that I could win (have no idea what is on here...)
So that is how it happened?
Yes, but it wasn't worth much, showing the world to be the best did not save it from it's stupidity.
In what sense?
What i mean is, in 2010 I publicly displayed 10s of extraordinary mods, that might only be understood in a few years, but kids continue to buy hyped up rubbish. I thought that showing the world that I was the best yoyo builder would have been enough to push them to buy yoyos that I produced. I could build a yoyo that travels in time if I had money and resources but I cannot transform idiots into geniuses.
Maybe you are not selling enough because your yoyos are 'simple' in respect to your mods?
I do not think it is because of this. Take for example the centauro tm! It is the yoyo that took the most effort, and in my opinion was the most innovative yoyo with a playable shape in the last 40 years. I presented it and no one blinked an eye to it, now a few years down the road it has been cloned by all the yoyo producers. Prototyping it was not simple or economic, in spite of this people still prefered to buy clones instead of the original. For this reason I have not produced any more yoyos with innovative shapes, but I limited myself to optimising the butterfly shape.
An example is the Pegasus, innovative shape for it's time, highly playable, built in only 37 examples and then?
And then?
I have to see little kids that slave to buy their umpteenth splashed piece of crap because 'there are only 500 of these'. Come on, enough (another italian word I cannot translate...)!
Therefore it is because of these reasons that you have decided to quit? Do you think you have given enough?
Yes and no, it is because of these reasons that I have decided to quit, but I have 10s of projects to bring to live, but I fear that they will only remain projects.
Like the futuro?
Yes, like the futuro, a yoyo with a negative shape, an ingenious object in the middle of 100s of yoyos that copy each other. Unfortunately if people keep on buying Duncan and yyf the future wil be full of duncan and yyf.
On the subject of yyf and the futuro, recently yyf ben showed the avantgard, and he did it as though he had created the yoyo of the century, unfortunetly they understood that is a yoyo with the same principle feature as the furuto and the centauro magituto 4.
Unfortunately these projects go back further than 1 year, but if we think about it on the stradivari I utilised a negative shape to risolve the problems of weight balance due to the excessive milling of the centre of the body.
It's annoying, that i did not gain anything from all of these ideas, to see that there is who, besides taking them in order to obtain personal gain, is not disturbed not even to give credit to who “gave” them the umpteenth idea in order to make money.
And what is the future of yoyoing?
Good question! I believe that we are heading towards the search for new shapes to make as much money as possible, no one is concentrating on playability, regarding play, it pleases me to see the judges rewarding innovation and flow, whilst there was a period in which only speed was rewarded.
Who will win the 2011 mod contest?
Almost without a doubt, it will be someone Japanese from team shinobu, I only know one modder capable of beating the Japanese, but as I already said, I do not mod yoyos anymore.
"Unfortunately if people keep on buying Duncan and yyf the future wil be full of duncan and yyf."
ReplyDeleteDuncan and YYF understand a concept called "Marketing." They know how to reach out to players, how to make their products desirable, and how to integrate themselves into the community.
Bist never did any of these things. The company was a small blip on people's radar, and the products never caught on.
It doesn't matter who is the "best" at making yoyos, or how amazing your yoyos are. All that matters is that people like your product, people like your image, and people want to throw your yoyos. For whatever number of reasons, people didn't "want" to throw Bist yoyos.
Bist MAY have had the best yoyos of all time, but I don't know that, because I was never presented with the opportunity to play with one.
It doesn't matter though, because Bist is no more. Reading this letter doesn't illicit any sympathy from me, it's just a long, angry letter from a man who never understood what made people want to play with yoyos.
Take your ball and go home, Mr. Bist, you're just a whiny little bitch who couldn't cut it in the industry, and decided to pass all the blame on other people instead of figuring out your problems and becoming successful.
Do not take this as a word for word statement from Ettore. It has been translated through a online translator I am assuming and they can not be trusted to translate properly.
ReplyDeleteWhile the general gist is easy enough to get, you really shouldn't make judgments based on his choice of words, as given by this interview, because they are not actually Ettores words, but the translators. Its also old ass news, like as in May 2011 old.
yea, i think its translated by the interviewer, but certain parts weren't translated because he couldn't understand i guess? there's this part (another italian word I cannot translate...). so yea. and just thought i'll share the interview for those who likes Bist yoyos.
ReplyDelete