Hello hello, welcome back to this week's edition of Sunday Chillin'! Springtime is upon us, I hope you're all feeling Youthful as the days lengthen.
Friends and Flourishes
When I was in middle school and high school, I had a lot of hobbies that involved hand dexterity. Somehow I found the idea of continuous, fluid motion of an external object really captivating and I spent a lot of time trying to achieve it in different ways. It probably all started when a salesman came to my elementary school and sold us competitive yoyos. [1] I bought a red one that I still have at home, and I spent many hours trying to figure out some super simple yoyo tricks.
Much like a gateway drug, this yoyo experience got me hooked, and a few years later, I bought some Astrojax at Toys R Us (RIP 1957-2021). Astrojax are basically a form of yoyo that really brings the three-body problem to life. They're three balls on a string, two fixed at either end, and one that slides freely in the middle. With three touchpoints and an infinite number of ways to manipulate the balls, it was both more challenging and more rewarding than a simple yoyo. [2]
Then after that was the classic penspinning, and then speed cubing, and then ultimately cardistry and gambling sleights. There's a whole lot I could write about each of these hobbies since I sank hundreds and hundreds of hours into each, but that's not actually the point today.
What I want to talk about is the incredibly vibrant online forums and niche communities that you could join back then to learn more about anything and everything.
I have a lot of fond memories from roughly 2008-2013 of spending hours after school perusing forums and interacting with other people nerding out just like me. Of course, forums like these existed long before I was on them, but in the case of cardistry, I really got to experience it during its heyday.
For those who are unfamiliar (which I imagine is most of you), cardistry is basically like penspinning but with playing cards. You take a full deck of cards and do some fancy things to make the cards move about in cool ways. There's no real "purpose" to it, but honestly, when has purpose been a prerequisite for fun? Although, much like with penspinning, you spend about as much time picking up cards that you've dropped as you do actually making progress. [3]
There were a few forums for cardistry back then, but the main ones that come to mind are dananddave.com, theory11, and United Cardists. Every day after school, I'd come home, grab a deck of cards, and hop on these forums and browse through all the new activity. At their peak, there were probably 300 people active on these forums at any given time so there was no lack of posts. In fact, I spent so much time on these messaging boards that I was actually a moderator for a number of years on dananddave. [4]
The same sort of thing happened with the Rubik's cube community, the penspinning community, and everything else I was interested in. When I wanted to learn more, there was a whole group of people who were willing to post tutorials, give feedback, and point me in the right direction. It was really endearing to experience such an intimate online community where everyone shared information and enthusiasm freely.
I still keep up loosely with the cardistry community and I recently followed some guy on IG who is one of the more popular creators now. He and I got to chatting and we realized that we actually conversed on some threads way back in 2010! It was a super fun blast from the past, and I'm glad to have reconnected with that part of my childhood.
I really do miss these sorts of niche communities. Forums in the early 2000s felt like a place you could go to just mess around without needing to justify anything you were doing. Sure, penspinning and yoyos and cardistry, these are all pretty esoteric things. But no one really cared about making money off of it or "content" or "maximizing engagement." It was just fun to pursue hobbies and work on pushing their boundaries. I made a lot of friends on those forums that I kept up with for many years until other hobbies took over, and I sure am glad that I had this experience.
This whole newsletter may seem like me pining for the old days, but I think there's still an opportunity to bring some semblance of those days back. Obviously now they've been replaced by other forms of social media like IG, Twitter, and Tiktok (which all have their own pros and cons). But somehow I feel like even though we all have way more connections, we're all less connected than before. Maybe sooner than later, these sorts of small, focused communities will spring back up as people grow weary of adtech. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.
Probably worth delving into more another week, but I'd love to hear about any experiences any of you may have had in similar communities back in the day. Hit that reply button and let me know!
The Rise of YouTube
A huge benefit of doing all of this right around the time that YouTube was also really taking off was that I found tons of music through videos that people would make to showcase these hobbies. Each community tended towards particular genres depending on whatever mood they were evoking. Cardistry leaned towards electronic or melancholy, yoyo and astrojax preferred exciting and dynamic, and Rubik's cube had no music so you could really hear the manic click clack of the plastic for 6 seconds. For this week, I'm sharing songs that I found through these communities and as a Bonus™, I'm also including the video I found it in (if it's still around)!
Headlock - Imogen Heap
Spotify | YouTube | Cardistry Video
The Architekt - Arms and Sleepers
Spotify | YouTube | Cardistry Video
Lex - Ratatat [5]
Spotify | YouTube
Brother Down - Sam Roberts Band [6]
Spotify | YouTube | Cardistry Video
The Trilogy - Dana Hocking [7]
Cardistry Video
See you all next Sunday!
suhaas
————————————————————————————
If you'd like to share this newsletter with your friends, please direct them to this link.
Here are Spotify and YouTube playlists with all the songs so far.
[1] I'm not entirely sure how one even decides on selling yoyos to children as a career path. I recall the yoyos ranging from $20 to $100 but it just seems like a very strange value proposition for kids. I was 7 so it's not like I had any amount of money at all, but this man was peddling these expensive toys regardless. In hindsight, maybe it was actually just a teenager representing some company (everyone above 14 looks like an adult when you're 7) but even so, seems like a weird thing to interrupt 2nd grade for. I bought one though, so obviously it worked.
[2] Here's a video of Astrojax so you can get a better sense of what I'm describing. The ones I had (and should still have somewhere in our basement) were made out of hard plastic and by golly did it sting whenever I would smack myself with them. Astrojax-ing is highly dependent on your rhythm since they're sort of counterbalanced by each other. Because of this, if your rhythm was off, you were in for a rough time. I'm sure this frequent pain expedited my eventual transition to penspinning.
[3] I used to drive my mom crazy whenever I would mess with cards while we were watching a movie as a family. I bet it's pretty hard to get very invested in an emotional moment when you're distracted by the krrraaacck of cards being sprung or by the sounds of me dropping and picking up the deck every 47 seconds. Interestingly, I had the same experience when practicing penspinning during rounds of debate tournaments. But I digress.
[4] The job of a moderator is probably not one that should be entrusted to a kid. One time a guy wrote something like "magician-cum-fraud" or something like that and I removed his post with reasoning like "inappropriate language is not allowed on this website." And he responded to me scathingly saying "there was nothing inappropriate about that message at all you idiot, what are you, 12 years old?" I was 14 but the point was made.
[5] Cardists really tended to like songs by Ratatat but unfortunately it looks like all of the original ones from back then must have been copyright-struck or something. We'll probably return to more music by Ratatat in the future but this is just a taste. You may recognize them as the producers from Pursuit of Happiness by Kid Cudi, but they have a pretty cool discography all around.
[6] This video and this song make me indescribably nostalgic. I thought it so magical that all you needed was a deck of cards, a couple of friends, and your own imagination to have this much fun. It helps that Kevin Ho, the uploader of this video was only 16 or something at the time of this video's creation. It just didn't seem that far out of reach for a kid like me, and isn't that just the perfect level of motivation?
[7] Unfortunately, I can't find the standalone song for this anymore (nor almost anything by Dana Hocking), but this was an important one to include. Back when I was first getting started, I asked my dad to get this three-DVD set to learn all these cool tricks. The music, visuals, and general atmosphere of The Trilogy are all etched into my brain and captured my attention for years. I apologize that the video resolution looks like it was recorded during the Fukushima reactor meltdown, but the original HD video was taken down. I hope the appeal still comes through for you as it did for me all those years ago.
Friends and Flourishes
When I was in middle school and high school, I had a lot of hobbies that involved hand dexterity. Somehow I found the idea of continuous, fluid motion of an external object really captivating and I spent a lot of time trying to achieve it in different ways. It probably all started when a salesman came to my elementary school and sold us competitive yoyos. [1] I bought a red one that I still have at home, and I spent many hours trying to figure out some super simple yoyo tricks.
Much like a gateway drug, this yoyo experience got me hooked, and a few years later, I bought some Astrojax at Toys R Us (RIP 1957-2021). Astrojax are basically a form of yoyo that really brings the three-body problem to life. They're three balls on a string, two fixed at either end, and one that slides freely in the middle. With three touchpoints and an infinite number of ways to manipulate the balls, it was both more challenging and more rewarding than a simple yoyo. [2]
Then after that was the classic penspinning, and then speed cubing, and then ultimately cardistry and gambling sleights. There's a whole lot I could write about each of these hobbies since I sank hundreds and hundreds of hours into each, but that's not actually the point today.
What I want to talk about is the incredibly vibrant online forums and niche communities that you could join back then to learn more about anything and everything.
I have a lot of fond memories from roughly 2008-2013 of spending hours after school perusing forums and interacting with other people nerding out just like me. Of course, forums like these existed long before I was on them, but in the case of cardistry, I really got to experience it during its heyday.
For those who are unfamiliar (which I imagine is most of you), cardistry is basically like penspinning but with playing cards. You take a full deck of cards and do some fancy things to make the cards move about in cool ways. There's no real "purpose" to it, but honestly, when has purpose been a prerequisite for fun? Although, much like with penspinning, you spend about as much time picking up cards that you've dropped as you do actually making progress. [3]
There were a few forums for cardistry back then, but the main ones that come to mind are dananddave.com, theory11, and United Cardists. Every day after school, I'd come home, grab a deck of cards, and hop on these forums and browse through all the new activity. At their peak, there were probably 300 people active on these forums at any given time so there was no lack of posts. In fact, I spent so much time on these messaging boards that I was actually a moderator for a number of years on dananddave. [4]
The same sort of thing happened with the Rubik's cube community, the penspinning community, and everything else I was interested in. When I wanted to learn more, there was a whole group of people who were willing to post tutorials, give feedback, and point me in the right direction. It was really endearing to experience such an intimate online community where everyone shared information and enthusiasm freely.
I still keep up loosely with the cardistry community and I recently followed some guy on IG who is one of the more popular creators now. He and I got to chatting and we realized that we actually conversed on some threads way back in 2010! It was a super fun blast from the past, and I'm glad to have reconnected with that part of my childhood.
I really do miss these sorts of niche communities. Forums in the early 2000s felt like a place you could go to just mess around without needing to justify anything you were doing. Sure, penspinning and yoyos and cardistry, these are all pretty esoteric things. But no one really cared about making money off of it or "content" or "maximizing engagement." It was just fun to pursue hobbies and work on pushing their boundaries. I made a lot of friends on those forums that I kept up with for many years until other hobbies took over, and I sure am glad that I had this experience.
This whole newsletter may seem like me pining for the old days, but I think there's still an opportunity to bring some semblance of those days back. Obviously now they've been replaced by other forms of social media like IG, Twitter, and Tiktok (which all have their own pros and cons). But somehow I feel like even though we all have way more connections, we're all less connected than before. Maybe sooner than later, these sorts of small, focused communities will spring back up as people grow weary of adtech. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.
Probably worth delving into more another week, but I'd love to hear about any experiences any of you may have had in similar communities back in the day. Hit that reply button and let me know!
The Rise of YouTube
A huge benefit of doing all of this right around the time that YouTube was also really taking off was that I found tons of music through videos that people would make to showcase these hobbies. Each community tended towards particular genres depending on whatever mood they were evoking. Cardistry leaned towards electronic or melancholy, yoyo and astrojax preferred exciting and dynamic, and Rubik's cube had no music so you could really hear the manic click clack of the plastic for 6 seconds. For this week, I'm sharing songs that I found through these communities and as a Bonus™, I'm also including the video I found it in (if it's still around)!
Headlock - Imogen Heap
Spotify | YouTube | Cardistry Video
The Architekt - Arms and Sleepers
Spotify | YouTube | Cardistry Video
Lex - Ratatat [5]
Spotify | YouTube
Brother Down - Sam Roberts Band [6]
Spotify | YouTube | Cardistry Video
The Trilogy - Dana Hocking [7]
Cardistry Video
See you all next Sunday!
suhaas
————————————————————————————
If you'd like to share this newsletter with your friends, please direct them to this link.
Here are Spotify and YouTube playlists with all the songs so far.
[1] I'm not entirely sure how one even decides on selling yoyos to children as a career path. I recall the yoyos ranging from $20 to $100 but it just seems like a very strange value proposition for kids. I was 7 so it's not like I had any amount of money at all, but this man was peddling these expensive toys regardless. In hindsight, maybe it was actually just a teenager representing some company (everyone above 14 looks like an adult when you're 7) but even so, seems like a weird thing to interrupt 2nd grade for. I bought one though, so obviously it worked.
[2] Here's a video of Astrojax so you can get a better sense of what I'm describing. The ones I had (and should still have somewhere in our basement) were made out of hard plastic and by golly did it sting whenever I would smack myself with them. Astrojax-ing is highly dependent on your rhythm since they're sort of counterbalanced by each other. Because of this, if your rhythm was off, you were in for a rough time. I'm sure this frequent pain expedited my eventual transition to penspinning.
[3] I used to drive my mom crazy whenever I would mess with cards while we were watching a movie as a family. I bet it's pretty hard to get very invested in an emotional moment when you're distracted by the krrraaacck of cards being sprung or by the sounds of me dropping and picking up the deck every 47 seconds. Interestingly, I had the same experience when practicing penspinning during rounds of debate tournaments. But I digress.
[4] The job of a moderator is probably not one that should be entrusted to a kid. One time a guy wrote something like "magician-cum-fraud" or something like that and I removed his post with reasoning like "inappropriate language is not allowed on this website." And he responded to me scathingly saying "there was nothing inappropriate about that message at all you idiot, what are you, 12 years old?" I was 14 but the point was made.
[5] Cardists really tended to like songs by Ratatat but unfortunately it looks like all of the original ones from back then must have been copyright-struck or something. We'll probably return to more music by Ratatat in the future but this is just a taste. You may recognize them as the producers from Pursuit of Happiness by Kid Cudi, but they have a pretty cool discography all around.
[6] This video and this song make me indescribably nostalgic. I thought it so magical that all you needed was a deck of cards, a couple of friends, and your own imagination to have this much fun. It helps that Kevin Ho, the uploader of this video was only 16 or something at the time of this video's creation. It just didn't seem that far out of reach for a kid like me, and isn't that just the perfect level of motivation?
[7] Unfortunately, I can't find the standalone song for this anymore (nor almost anything by Dana Hocking), but this was an important one to include. Back when I was first getting started, I asked my dad to get this three-DVD set to learn all these cool tricks. The music, visuals, and general atmosphere of The Trilogy are all etched into my brain and captured my attention for years. I apologize that the video resolution looks like it was recorded during the Fukushima reactor meltdown, but the original HD video was taken down. I hope the appeal still comes through for you as it did for me all those years ago.