I live in White Plains, NY, filled with middle schoolers roaming about, praising the floor that others walk on, learning their every move, with no creativity to their style, flow, or stringing knowledge. These middle schoolers, soon to be high schoolers, have no special attributes, combos, or anything unique, that i think it takes to call ones self a glowstringer; and most of these kids I speak of, are photocopies of Freakdeke, Knives, and Syphon. You 3 are great stringers, and I enjoy watching each vid u make individually, but wen I cant walk up a street w.o seeing a 12 year old boy learn your 1handed maneuvers, I gotta say something.
Why do they do it?
Is it for the glory, to tell their friends they know more? Or maybe its because they want to be more like you?
I c none of these kids give freehanding a run for its money, why?
It seems to me like all these kids are doing is showboating..
At any rate, its a pet peeve of mine everytime i walk around wp, to c a kid walking around w. glowsticks in public doing a couple wraps, knowing hes probably already signed up for gs.c..it even happens in the mall, or wen im picking up my little cousin from school. Someone explain please, because I still think glowsticking is about enjoying yourself and coming up with moves to call your own, and take yourself away from the ordinary! Lmk, thanks for reading.

I think you're just hating and, honestly, it makes me kinda sick. Knocking them because they have no creativity, style or flow is just BS. It's pretty much in contrast with the ideals we hold dear at this site. We don't hate on people for the reasons you listed. In fact, we don't hate on anyone. We'd always accept people that want to learn and improve, even an ex-battler, here with open arms because we're just not about that.

Kids are going to act that way because they're kids. Is it something we as a community like? No, however we can't change the mentality of your average 12 year old universally.

Glowsticking IS about enjoying yourself. It's not necessarily about creating moves to call your own because they've pretty much all been done before. None of them is really your own move. If it was something completely new, it wouldn't have a name... but I'd guarantee there's a name for just about every stringing move you know. So are you a clone? Are you a biter? Or are you just a guy who is learning to glowstring and slowly improving along the way?

How you put moves together, how you execute them and how you flow helps to define your style, but in the end we're all doing the same hundred or so moves when it comes to stringing. You're not doing anything super-unique and I guarantee it. There's maybe a handful of people on this site that push the art to the point that they are truly "Unique" and they certainly don't go tooting their own horns about how great they are or how their style is so much better than the next person. Instead they try and help the next person who comes along to get better.

Perhaps you should consider doing the same instead of hating on a bunch of kids that, in the end, are acting just like kids. Big shock there.

*none of this is directed at original poster*

I dont care if someone wants to learn or copy someone else.


I think every single one of those kids that are signed up , leech from us, and dont give anything back whether it's posts or new ideas and do it just to show off and get their tiny middle school and highschool egos jerked off should fuck off.


Do not come to gsc and not read the articles, not give back to discussions, make videos to get props, or form stupid little crews because you were to much of a loser to make it onto your high school football team and this is to support your bruised self esteem.

If you are part of a crew, support the idea of battles, going to high school dances and stringing to get props, stringing to own other people or anything along that lines just let me know and I'll be sure to handle things with you in the best way possible.

Oh.. and PLUR DUDE!

I disagree. Not everything's been done yet.

Yeah it's wrong to have their mentality and yes it's boring to watch copies. But at such an age kids are all looking for someone to be like, just like when kids trace their favorite comics. They may do it cuz their parents ignore them at home and don't give them enough attention.

I'll let someone else explain the phases of the copy stringer. Just ignore them I guess.

Remember that yo yo craze a while back, stringing will probable die out in the middle/highschool setting in a year or so anyways...but it might produce some interesting ravers later on...

I have no objections to their learning from other glowstickers. In fact, I encourage it. I consider it an essential route for the transfer of knowledge/culture from one generation to the next; without mutual learning or taking inspiration from other glowstickers, glowsticking itself would cease to exist. We all learn first by imitating techniques from others (i.e. - butterfly, weave, wraps) and once we have developed the basic foundation, we add our own style to it and hopefully contribute something innovative to the culture.

I do have objections to "cloning", or imitating someone else's style exactly, piece by piece. "Imitation is suicide," Emerson once stated. Nothing is accomplished except losing your own identity. That's really just plagiarism.

Regardless, if kids just glowstick to be cool, or to feel like they have an anchor in the typhoon of identity-crisises during high school, they will leave glowsticking as quickly as they picked it up. No worries. Battlers and show-offs eventually find other things to compete with or to show-off with; they don't stay.

it's really really hard to be completely original and creative. not everyone can get to a level that distinguishes themselves with their own styles... even if they want to.

as long as they give credit when it's due then i don't see a problem. learning by copying is not a bad thing. learning by copying and then claim it as your own, then that's wrong.

i think i know who you are talking about.. these young kids from white plains that went to the sleepy hollow meet up thing to meet us.. i guess all they did was absorb all the things we did there and imitate everything thing we did huh =\ so much for personal style =x