One of the myriad online responsibilities I take on for Myachi, one is to simply Google the word "Myachi" from time to time and see what I find. The first few pages are usually the same, but you can find some fun stuff if you keep digging. Once in a while I'll find new videos, forums, wiki entries, etc. and sometimes I manage to connect with Myachi Maniacs who aren't yet part of our online community.
But I also find the negative stuff. The forums where people are trashing Myachi or talking bad about a video or something like that. I guess that's the way of the Internet; anything that some people like other people will go out of their way to dislike. So once in a while I wind up digging up some age old forum thread about how much Myachi sucks.
Like I said, this is to be expected. No reason to let it ruffle your feathers or anything. It's like the occasional negative comment that we get on our You-Tube videos; if you took these kind of things seriously you'd probably be ready to give up on You-Tube altogether.
So when I see a forum thread about how stupid Myachi is, I'll usually read through it and I almost always find at least a few folks that pop up to defend the game. Occasionally you'll see the original poster getting trashed by a community of people who looked at our videos and our website and decided that it was actually pretty cool. In almost every instance there's at least one person out there that hops in and defends the game... and it's usually somebody who never saw Myachi before.
But what surprises me is that I very often see these things on skill toy forums. I've seen Myachi thoroughly thrashed on a yo-yo forum, a footbag forum, a diabolo forum, a juggling forum and a contact juggling forum. I understand why it would happen on a video game forum or just some random "Pokemon fanatic" forum, but on a skill toy forum? Skill toy enthusiasts trashing other skill toy enthusiasts?
It kind of reminds me of the birth of "Extreme" sports. In my youth, if you rode a bicycle, you were all but obligated to make fun of people that rode skateboards. Skateboarders were almost universally prompted to make fun of in-line skaters. In-line skaters were all about trashing BMXers. It was a vicious, perpetual and ultimately useless cycle of dislike.
But then there were those who rose up against the in-group mentality and took the high road. There were skaters who tried in-lines and discovered that they're actually mad fun. There were BMXers that got together with skateboarders and helped each other invent new tricks. There were even people who crossed over and got good at a few different extreme sports.
It was because of those few open-minded individuals that extreme sports managed to flourish. It was through the minority of cooperating minds that things like the X-Games and Gravity Games got started. It was the collaboration of people who had similar, if not identical, interests. If we'd left it to the majority, there was no way that skateboarders would share their street course with a bunch of BMXers. There was no way they would all be using the same vert ramp and thereby legitimizing one another's sports.
This is what I think of every time I come across a bunch of Poi enthusiasts who are talking about how lame devil sticks are or a bunch of diabolists cracking jokes about foot-baggers. As a lifelong juggler, I can't help but wonder what skill toy players could create if they were willing to work together. Imagine an X-Games style competition for skill toys. Jugglers, devil stickers, diabolo fans, Myachi Maniacs, footbag folks, kendama players, dice-stackers, poi swingers, lasso artists and yoyo champs all under one roof? I don't know if I'd have more fun as a competitor or as a spectator.
My hope is that the Myachi community can rise above that. Despite the petty taunts of small minded people who only want to exert enough skill to appreciate one thing, I hope that we can set the standard of being open to all the skills the world has to offer. My skill toy interests include (but are not limited to):
- Myachi
- Juggling
- Club Swinging
- Meteor
- Poi
- Cigar Boxes
- Devil Sticks
- Contact Juggling
- Staff
- Diabolo
- Footbag
- Chatter Rings (Gyro Rings)
- Lasso
- Finger Chux
- Yo Yo
- Torches
- Astrojax
- Unicycle
- Stilts
- Balance Board
- Slackline
But here's the important bit: Even if I didn't, even if I tried, say, Kendama, and I couldn't master the most basic tricks and didn't enjoy a second of it, I would still appreciate the skill and would support those people who were trying to popularize the game. I certainly wouldn't jump on the Myachi forum and start trash talking Kendama and people who play it.
Skill is my addiction and I find that once you learn to appreciate that, you can fall in love with even the most mundane arts. That should be the ideal we strive for. Since we're often the target of this, we should take it upon ourselves never to be the ones casting the stones.
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