The IWC, or Internet Wrestling Community is all of those people who
spend much of their free time sitting at their computers discussing the
happening of WWE, TNA and independent wrestling. That’s right. You and I
are both members of the IWC.
If you have been a part of this community for a while then you know how much the members enjoy complaining.
Fans of professional wrestling enjoy different aspects of the
industry. Each member of the IWC has their favorite wrestlers. Many fans
enjoy making predictions and hopes for the outcomes of matches and
storylines. They also enjoy fantasy booking extended periods of time in
wrestling.
However, when WWE, TNA or another promotion decides on an outcome of a
match or storyline that a member of the IWC doesn’t like, they
complain. If you follow members of the IWC on social media during Raw,
Smackdown, pay-per-views and other events, you read the reactions of
these wrestling fans. Sometimes they are positive, but a lot of time
they are quite negative.
While I do my fair share of complaining, I have noticed repetition in
the reactions of wrestling fans. I’ve been thinking about this recently, and in short, I think it’s
because there’s a general “f’k the establishment” anti corporation vibe
in culture/society in general and this translates to wrestling
discussion as well, so because Roman Reigns (for example) is seen as a
“product of the machine” and he didn’t come through a grassroots
movement (like the indies) people will spin the facts to suit their
agenda to hate on him. This is why I believe Randy Orton would be the
biggest internet darling if he came up through the independents. Another
example is the praise that Tom Phillips gets on NXT and the hate
Michael Cole gets on the main shows, anyone who isn’t biased towards NXT
can see that Tom Phillips is being groomed as the next Michael Cole, he
rarely calls the actual moves (this doesn’t really bother me
personally) and instead uses verbs (like slammed, kicked, planted,
punched etc.), but because Tom Phillips is on BASED NXT (praise the
BASED HHH also) he gets a free pass.
This is even further exacerbated on Reddit because the most popular
opinions will be up-voted to the top and all the other opinions will not
be seen at the bottom or they will be unavailable to read because they
go below the comment threshold or whatever it’s called.
The biggest fans who become obsessed who get on the Internet generally
care so much that they get defensive and angry when things don’t go
there way.
They talk so much about the product, dreaming up ideas and fantasy
booking, that when
things don’t go the way they planned it in their heads, they complain. I don’t mean to lump everyone together like one person, and I know that a
lot of complaints are valid, this is just my assessment of why many
Internet fans are always trashing the product – they care too much.
