It is with great sorrow that I tell you: this is the last Social Media Mania. After 6 fun weeks, I’ve come to realize this weekly update isn’t up to par with the other content we here at ProRasslin.com usually offer. Most of our posts are either walks down memory lane or up-to-date news of today’s most important events. Social Media Mania falls awkwardly in the center. I don’t imagine we are the only pro wrestling site you visit, so a lot of the information I deliver here is days old. Our readers deserve better than that. I’ll be back next week with a re-tooled, re-occurring column. For now, enjoy the final edition of Social Media Mania…
The internet has changed pro wrestling in an unparalleled way. The curtain between wrestlers and fans has become as transparent as the one you’d find in your shower. This has changed the way stories unfold and how wrestlers are perceived. This column looked at what wrestlers were saying online but rarely how we, as fans, were reacting to them. Without the latter portion of the previous sentence, the former wouldn’t matter much. That’s the number one thing that has changed in pro wrestling: the fans.
My other column is Greatest Videos Eeeeeever. That’s a nostalgic look at some of wrestling’s finest and worst moments over the years. In researching those videos, I find that wrestling is no more ridiculous today than it was then. As a matter of fact, I’d say it’s quite the opposite. From our column here yesterday on The Yeti to GVE’s inaugural post about The Shockmaster, I’d say nothing that’s happened in 2011 has compared to the silliness of those. Yet we all loved wrestling so much more 10 years ago. Is the internet to blame for that? Well, not fully.
We’re older now. I’m not sure about the age demographic of our readers, but I’m the youngest of our writers here at 24. In watching old episodes of Raw or Nitro, I realize I’m the one that has changed, not wrestling. On a weekly basis WCW Nitro ended with Hogan, Bischoff and nWo talking in the ring for 10-20 minutes until Sting showed up. He’d beat up Scott Norton, Virgil and maybe Buff Bagwell while the others fled. Credits roll and we’d wait 6 days for it all to happen again. While WWF was more clever at the time, most of their broadcast was Stone Cold and Vince trying to get the best of one another.
At the height of my wrestling fandom, I was 13 years old and I signed online with a 56k modem via AOL under the screen name Buzz12. The only wrestling site I knew of was the now defunct WrestleFest.com. The guy running the site had title histories and an amazing rumor section. It was unlike anything I have ever seen. He also had an appearance section that would alert you to wrestlers coming to convention centers, comic book stores and hotel ballrooms near you. Thanks to WF.com heads up, I got to meet Edge in a hoagie store, Darren Drozdov at a water park and RVD outside a closed down department store.
Those days are over. I follow wrestlers on Facebook. Wrestlers run their own Twitter accounts. The on-air product is boring because I’ve probably acquired some sort of ADD thanks to the internet. High spots are never high enough because I saw some no name guy do something 3 times cooler on YouTube. I know a lot of injuries are really drug suspensions thanks to hundreds of dirtsheets reporting on them.
So as this post concludes, I invite you to let wrestlers once again be the larger than life superstars they once were. To remember that nothing has changed since we were kids other than the fact that we’re no longer kids. Ignore the dirtsheets (remember, we’re no dirtsheet!) This is the same pro wrestling we grew up on with all new faces….and heels. Enjoy it.
