My brother and I, on the phone, had an interesting conversation with one another last night. It caused me to read further into the subject matter. This prompted and even more interesting discussion between my significant other and I today. After doing some more reading into the subject, mostly for personal application and awareness, as well as a means for strategizing at work and school(I’m involved with marketing, sales and design), I finally began to ponder it’s effects on the unicycling community and the sport as a whole.
Our discussion was about how the internet, particularly the blogosphere and social networking sites(IE:Facebook and Twitter) allows the individual to quantify things that he or she does in effect promoting those things to people whom they believe care to ponder them. This has become increasingly more prevalent in today’s society for people who do things just to be able to say, “Look at what I did!”. The internet has become an excellent tool to enable people to do this. My thoughts now turn to unicycling:
With the rise of popularity of home computers and the internet, the unicyclist community, both on and offline has seen dramatic change. Even someone like myself, who has only been unicycling for the better part of a decade has seen much change in popularity, style, and ideologies in unicycling. If you watched One Wheel - No Limit when it first came out, like I did, and then watched it now you would notice more than just the progressions in riding and editing. The psychological aspect of unicycling has greatly changed. I wont make conjecture as to whether the change has been good or bad for the sport because it can be argued either way. But I will state this: the countless threads and variations on “I just landed” and “match this trick/skill” are degrading the original experience of learning skills for your own personal enjoyment. I am sure many of you, like myself, have begun thinking of ride write-ups while you are actually mid-ride, maybe even before actually riding! What kind of level of enjoyment are you capable of experiencing if you are doing it through the eyes of others? A second hand form of enjoyment at best. Is getting a skill on video more fulfilling or is it better to know that you landed a clean one unwatched?
You probably haven’t noticed, but I rarely even peek at RSU any more. This is because every other thread is either A) a necropost. B) a repeat question. C) a preconceived write-up. or D) I just landed ____. All of these things are of no interest to me because they have no real value.
Something you may want to think about when living your life on and off the unicycle is why you do what you do. Doing things for yourself or to help others for personal enjoyment is great, but doing things just to show others for personal enjoyment is detracting from the value of the enjoyment itself. You will be much happier doing things for yourself and receiving recognition(a form of acceptance) for it than merely trying to do things for recognition. I pity the fool who learns skills to be able to post in the next “OUT the game” thread, for he enjoys himself much less than the man who is picking up a unicycle to learn the skill for his own pleasure.
If that’s your only measure of the reasons for which people ride, then you’re failing to survey the riders who are out there just riding for the sake of riding… which would lead you to the conclusion that you’re at.
The unicyclist saw it, unless he’s blind, and then he might actually be riding a badger or something.
One hand clapping? Piece of cake[claps with one hand]
I’ll keep making new threads every time I update my blog too!
Hardly, I’m just stating that those kinds of threads are real examples of degradation of the experience. Kris Holm is example of someone who went out and got good at riding for himself and his own personal enjoyment and slowly gained notoriety for being great until he reached the point where he is at today. I am pleased whenever I meet the few individuals at meets who never use the forums(who, on average, are better riders than those who frequent the forums), or only do so to find out about such events, not to say “Hey look what I went to!” the day after the meet.
All those self-promoters out there are helping grow the sport. They do the talking, while the majority of members of this community read their stuff & look at their images (or not) without necessarily posting.
Each of us gets satisfaction out of our activities in different ways. For me, for years, it was being a performer. While I did other forms of unicycling at the same time, I loved doing shows because I was able to share what unicycling is with large groups of people each time. That also spread awareness of what unicycling is, and was part of why I liked doing it. Also it feels great to make people entertained; to make them go “wow”.
The ones who aren’t getting fulfilled here will move on, either with unicycling or with something else. The forums will still be here. I agree with you on this though; there hasn’t been much of interest going on in RSU lately. There will always be necroposts (better than starting a new thread on the same topic) and people asking the same old questions. That’s one of the things forums are for.
Lastly I agree that everyone should ride for themselves first. If you’re doing it for someone else, maybe there’s something else you could be doing that makes you happier.
Oh, and before the Internet, unicyclists still showed off to each other quite a bit. But then it helped a lot to be in a unicycle club, where you had to do it quite locally. That approach really held back growth in the sport.
if i learned to unicycle by myself, i never would have done anything except ride forward, if i could do that at all. the internet has given me a direction, you could say. i show my grandpa, a unicyclist, new tricks like the wheelwalk and seat wrap. he is amazed. i dont learn tricks to compete with others, but i learn them to progress. do i win otg games? no. do i benefit from participating? yes. even if i go through a game and never have to learn a new trick, i am at least helping others. so really, this website is crucial to spreading unicycling as a sport.
One has to question the integrity of the growth. We saw a massive influx of riders from 2005-2008, more than ever before. However a large portion of those riders flooded the forums and meets and then disappeared. They have probably all but forgotten how to ride. While I admit, a sport as small as this benefits from growth, rapid increase and decline is hardly beneficial.
I have been addicted to performing since I was very young, and I categorize performance according to the setting(Be it impersonal or not). It is very rewarding to present one’s self to an audience to bring them entertainment and/or education, and it is also very self fulfilling to know that you were able to perform well.
This presents a new point to my discussion, albeit somewhat arbitrary, one of the real benefits of the internet’s effect on unicycling is it’s ability to increase the pace at which the sport is progressed. The joy that you and your grandpa share in seeing you perform new skills is genuine.
The point I am really trying to get at that may be overlooked or misunderstood(Foss hit this right on the head) is that the greatest pleasure is derived from riding for one’s own self. Anything that would present another motive(purportment) for riding is compromising to the value and enjoyment of the activity itself.
I appreciate your thoughts and input, keep 'em coming!
well if some hot babe came up to me and was like, learn how to rolling hop 90cm by next tuesday and i will be your sex slave, then i think my priorities would allow for some extra hopping practice. like a lot extra. like skipping school to uni extra. and i am in my right mind
PS: By definition, a right minded person does EVERYTHING in order to get either money or women. And they only want more money in order to get better women:p
I think what catboy’s getting at is that social networking allows people to make a sort of social resume, and that they add entries to this resume by sampling a hobby (like unicycling) for a short period of time, a year or a few months or whatever, just so they can have pics of them doing it and status updates about going out for a ride, in order to gain the social recognition of being cool and going against the grain.
But this is nothing new…people have always been doing this, it’s just easier to play show and tell with all your friends with facebook and whatnot.
So there are these hobby-samplers that some look down upon because they aren’t “authentic” unicyclists, just “posers” out for the “image.” It’s just another way of delineating an “us” and “them” among unicyclists. But this will never go away…there will always be people that are in need of more social acceptance and thus are always trend-jumping and sampling more hobbies, and there will be people that stick with things for their own reasons…and people in between.
Aside from noting that this is the case, I’m not sure what point catboy is trying to make, though. Unicyclists ride for differing motivations…so what? The case is the same in every other sport and hobby.
I don’t think there are any poser unicyclists. For unicycling to be impressive to a non-rider (or another unicyclist for that matter), you’ve got to be pretty good. And maybe someone started out as a poser, but after training for the couple years it would take to be good enough to impress someone they wouldn’t be a poser anymore. Or they’d quit after they found the difficulties of progressing to an impressive level, and either way they wouldn’t be a poser unicyclist.
This discussion reminded me of a passage in Philippians (unicycling added).
It is true that some preach unicycling out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so out of love, knowing that unicyling is put here for pure enjoyment. The former preach unicycling out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up recognition for themselves. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, unicycling is preached. And because of this I rejoice.
But the rest of what you thought I was getting at was wrong.
I’m merely trying to state(over and over again because you people have poor reading comprehension) that the man who rides for himself, and the pleasure he gets out of riding, is capable of attaining a higher, more genuine level of happiness from riding than the man who rides to quantify a self-purporting agenda.
I couldn’t give a fuck less about the “poser” label, some stupid verse from a book full of fallacies with the word unicycling added in and whether or not harper trolls more than me. I am talking about the human psyche, and most of you, unfortunately, just aren’t going to get it.
