Well, in a first my twitter account got suspended for 12 hours, because I suggested some of my fellow wrestling fans go play in traffic. Now why would I do such a thing? Because y’all suck, that’s why. Y’all really do. You guys, and I do mean guys because they’re the guilty parties here, are second only to Star Wars fans as the dirt worst of fandoms. And you’ve only gotten worse with time. In what is definitely a contender for all time low they raised a fuss about a young lady who’d just gotten hired by the WWE as a writer and harassed her on Twitter until she had to protect her account. (Unfortunately this isn’t limited to wrestling fans, I wrote about a similar situation in the world of comic books here.)
I’m leaving the lady’s name out because she already took enough crap from you guys and I don’t want any lame brain who sees this and gets mad to have an easy time. But she got hired for a job, and got fired after a bunch of idiot fans and one guy who runs a dirtsheet made a big fuss on social media about a podcast interview she did after she’d just gotten hired. A non wrestling podcast at that which means that these bozos had to actually go look it up to hear it or read what she said. And what did she say? Hate speech? No. Inflammatory foreign policy proposals? No. Did she trash her soon to be bosses? No.
She admitted that she didn’t know who the characters were on the show yet, and that she didn’t know much about pro wrestling. That’s it. And yet that was enough for some of you to turn gatekeeper about of all things, pro wrestling. Because someone who isn’t part of the secret club got a job that you’ll probably never have. And a bunch of you who don’t even watch (or claim to not watch) Monday Night RAW couldn’t handle that someone who hasn’t read all the sacred texts got hired to write some new ones.
Please tell me, do you know who the writers are on any other show you watch on TV? Do you know how much they knew about the characters on the show when they first got hired? If somebody who just got hired did a podcast interview where they referred to Detective Jensen instead of Benson, do you think there would be angry legions of Law and Order fans getting mad on the internet? Would there be Hollywood dirtsheet writers making articles and blasting them out on Twitter? No. You know why? Because unlike some of you, those people are normal.
That’s all that this is; some of you jerks out there are mad that a girl who doesn’t know what a Saito suplex is got hired instead of them calling you to live out your reddit fantasy booking dreams. And please spare me the ‘well, she shouldn’t have said all that on a podcast’ excuse. She wasn’t going to work in the White House or the Pentagon. She was going to be a writer on a wrestling show. Literally the only people who cared were you, and if you didn’t make it a big public issue she’d still be there. And for what, so only the ‘right people’ get to write a show that you complain about every week anyway?
I’m sorry but writing for a pro wrestling show is not some deep thing like The Sopranos or whatever. Wrestling storylines are pretty damn simple – ambition, friendship, betrayal, reconciliation, revenge, grevivances turned into feuds, egomania, etc. And they’re made simple enough for kids and adolescents to be able to get on at least a surface level. The characters are straight out of high school, the workplace, or action movies. And the writers don’t book the matches, they write the dialogue and game out the segments in between matches. You need to be a good writer and have experience working in TV. You don’t need to be able to pass a wrestling history exam or know how to book the territory.
But of course you dorks think that because you’ve been studying that for the past 20 years that you know what it takes. And when they don’t book the show to fit your fantasy booking fever dreams you get all bent out of shape and mad on the internet and blame the people who make the shows instead of realizing that you’re a dope who keeps repeating the same dumb ideas (Bring back CM Punk! Put the title on a midcarder who deserves it! Put Paul Heyman in charge!) every day. You throw around boogeyman terms like ‘scripted promos’ as a way of showing that you know what’s wrong with everything. And now you do this.
Sorry dude but the biggest mainstream star in the history of the business used scripted promos, and from a TV writer at that. Some of the best WWE television was done by television writers who didn’t know who the world champion was when they got hired. And we’ve seen evidence that sending the boys out to let it fly can get real bad real fast so to act like a script is the devil is just dumb. And using your disdain at the mere existence of scripts to gatekeep against someone who could have brought fresh insight is a total sucker move.
Which is really what this is about, gatekeeping. Like your comic book and gaming counterparts, you lament wrestling not being as mainstream as it was 20 years ago but you rail against anyone and anything that could take it there again. And you rage against the kind of people who will come in the tent if it became more mainstream again. Getting some people from outside the bubble to see this thing we love and provide their perspective could be a thing that helps, but you’d rather make sure everyone knows the secret handshake even if everyone is an increasingly smaller group of people.
I grow increasingly impatient with you folks because you refuse to either watch the show and take for what it is, or move on. Having opinions on what happens afterwards is fine. But constantly pregaming and prejudging entire shows based on rumors and complaining non stop about things that are often the opposite of what you say is even happening is wack. Having full throated takes about a show that you say you haven’t watched in 3 years or 10 years stinks.. I really do wish y’all would go away and leave us alone so we can be welcoming to new people who won’t be scared away by the likes of you.
Go watch something else and stop bothering us, will ya? Is being part of the discourse about something you think is bad that enticing? Are you that desperate for attention? Do you need that badly to get a W for yourself in life that you need to cause enough of a ruckus to get a lady fired from her job? The obviously is yes, and that shows me that the real loser in fandom and life is you. Trust me pal, people don’t think you’re lame because you’re a wrestling fan. They think you’re lame because you just are.
Stroke of Genius 