2 Cents: "Smart" marks

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NWK2000
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2 Cents: "Smart" marks

Post by NWK2000 » Nov 27th, '15, 15:58

In a recent review of NXT, our pal Big Red Machine posted this summary
Corey Graves angrily buried Rich Brennan and Byron Saxton as “people who think things could be done better” and said that such people likely “post on message boards.” That’s us they’re burying right there, and they’re so confident in their arrogance that their ideas are so obviously the right ones and us stupid fans aren’t reacting to it correctly, so everything is our fault, not theirs.

Now, before I get into this, I just want to say, I absolutely love WR. This is the only forum related to wrestling I would be able to say I'm proud to be a part of and look forward to looking at daily

HOWEVER

I frequent other forums, as we all do I'm sure, and on every forum sans this one, for every one intelligent remark or observation made about the wrestling industry, 10 of them are whiny diatribes devoid of any original solutions. The "smart" wrestling community is nothing more than an army of robots shouting the same opinions into the hivemind that is the IWC.

Now, you might think, "Well gosh NWK. All you'd have to do is watch an episode of Raw to know that the product is really suffering right now." And you'd be right. The product can definitely improve, But when I most things in life, usually I work on highlighting the positive aspects of what that thing is before attacking the negative.

Another part of my personality that's making this really difficult for me is that I like to talk to my friends who like wrestling about it. Having thoughtful discussions about wrestling is one of my favorite things to do, as there's no other art form like it. But when the majority of the internet wrestling community only shit on the product, without even trying to find a breadth of positivity, and when that complaining extends to people like Mick Foley, it makes it REALLY hard to enjoy wrestling.

With that said, here's the one thing that absolutely boggles my mind about the "Smart" marks and why I put the word "smart" in the title. If you were to ask any average Joe how they would react if a TV show they liked suddenly didn't live up to expectation for months at a time, you'd figure that most intelligent people would stop watching, and no busy themselves with talking about it on a routine basis. Not "smart" marks. They continually complain, putting themselves through the TV shows week after week after week as if they have nothing better to do. That's less offensive however, than the people who follow wrestling exclusively via Meltzer, Alvarez and the like. A few years ago, I was in the minority in the fact that I couldn't stand Alvarez, Meltzer, and Vinny. A while ago, while listening to F4W at work on Youtube, I realized it wasn't them I didn't like. I realized that they're all, intelligent, well spoken people, even if Alvarez does work himself into a coronary when discussing Impact. No, the people that I realized that I hated were the people who said, "Oh, I haven't watched Raw in months but you're completely right." If you haven't watched, then how can you make an opinion? Better yet, why are you still following reviews of the shows if you're not interested?

On another note Wrestlecrap can die a death. The crew's gimmick is that they're obscenely negative, and now that the Death of WCW has been analyzed on nearly a show by show basis, they're stretching for material


TL:DR- I try to find positivity in wrestling, take reviews with a grain of salt, wonder why people who claim to hate the product still watch/talk about it, and would be overjoyed if Wrestlecrap fell off the face of the Earth.
NWK Reviews is closed for business for now.

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Big Red Machine
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Re: 2 Cents: "Smart" marks

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 28th, '15, 18:19

Nothing you said is wrong (aside from your criticism of Foley, but I’ll get to that in a moment).
As for why we watch when the show sucks:
Wrestling fans, like other passionate groups of fans (I’ll use Trekkies as an example), watch wrestling because we REALLY WANT TO LIKE IT. If it’s bad, we’ll sit through it week after week in the hopes of it being good. Similarly, no matter how bad Voyager and Enterprise got, us Trekkies still continued to watch. Hell… I’ve F*CKING HATED the two J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies… and I know in my heart that no matter how much I have b*tched and moaned over the past six years, I’m probably going to see the next one in theaters, and almost certainly the first weekend it comes out, because it’s still Star Trek and I really want to like it. Similarly, I, who have basically spent the past six years documenting how much TNA has sucked, I am probably going to the first Impact tapings for Pop TV, because I really do want to like it.
I do agree that there is an overall negativity (and one of the reasons I love this place is that we don’t have any of that blanket “IWC’s opinion” pack-mentality dismissive hatred here)… but I think most of that negativity comes from a place of love. We do really WANT to like it, and so when things go badly, we get a lot more frustrated than we would if we didn’t care.
One of the things I have tried to do a lot more over the years is to try to offer up alternative ideas rather than just say “this sucked and here’s why.” I think Mick Foley was doing the same thing. He wasn’t just criticizing. He was telling WWE exactly what they were doing wrong and exactly how they could fix it (LISTEN TO THE FANS!)
And THAT is what was really bothering me in the post you quoted above. Rather than attempting to incorporate some sort of feedback based on reactions to people in the arenas, WWE is so G-d damn certain that they “know” what is right. Roman Reigns is THE guy. It doesn’t matter if the people cheer the next six babyfaces below him (and also Owens, Barrett, and Wyatt) more than they cheer Roman. Roman is THE GUY. Obviously Owens is too fat, Bryan is too small, Cesaro and Barrett have funny accents, and Ziggler and Ambrose are too… ummm… whatever the problem with those two is. But the point is that there is clearly no way that people with these defects could EVER connect with the crowd… except that they do. Every. Single. Week. And they do it RIGHT IN FRONT OF WWE’S FACE… but rather than admit that they were wrong and listen to the fans, WWE repeatedly chooses to hide their heads in the sand and either ignore what is right in front of their faces- or even worse, to actively sabotage it- just to “prove” that they were right.
Really… WHO GIVES A SH*T WHO IS BEING PUSHED AS LONG AS YOU’RE MAKING MONEY WITH IT? Isn’t that doing things that are “best for business” means? Putting aside your ego to do things that will make you money? The fans are rejecting Roman Reigns’ push… so WWE’s solution is to do their best to bury everyone else. The long twenty-minute opening promos or the Divas Revolution or having a million different backstage skits with Seth Rollins and the Authority every week isn’t working… and WWE’s response is to just keep doing it until they drive viewership into the ground? I am completely dumbfounded that such successful businesspeople could think this way, especially after seeing so many competitors fail. They have clearly lost sight of how this business works, and if they don’t get back on the right track it be the death of them. Not now- not even soon- but eventually.
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NWK2000
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Re: 2 Cents: "Smart" marks

Post by NWK2000 » Nov 29th, '15, 00:23

You're right, you're absolutely right. But what befuddles me, especially in modern times, is that we have so many options that book well and cater to what the types of fans that "post on message boards" want. We live in a time of choice and opportunity, especially with wrestling. I almost say that wrestling as a whole is in a better place than it was in a decade ago. We have EVOLVE, LU, New Japan, Ring of Honor. I don't get why people would watch a clearly inferior product if they didn't enjoy it. Again, it could just be a fundemental personality difference between myself and the average smark, but I digress.

The reason why I brought up Mick Foley was because he's parroting smark opinions at the minute. And regardless of how valid it might be, it bothers me when people who have been through so much seem to be just parroting opinions like a crochety old man.
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Big Red Machine
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Re: 2 Cents: "Smart" marks

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 29th, '15, 00:45

NWK2000 wrote:You're right, you're absolutely right. But what befuddles me, especially in modern times, is that we have so many options that book well and cater to what the types of fans that "post on message boards" want. We live in a time of choice and opportunity, especially with wrestling. I almost say that wrestling as a whole is in a better place than it was in a decade ago. We have EVOLVE, LU, New Japan, Ring of Honor. I don't get why people would watch a clearly inferior product if they didn't enjoy it. Again, it could just be a fundemental personality difference between myself and the average smark, but I digress.
1) Not everyone is willing to spend the money on ROH or New Japan or Evolve or CHIKARA or SHINE or whoever. WWE and TNA (and ROH TV) are free.
2) I think that, with WWE in particular, watching Raw allows you to stay (for lack of a better term) culturally literate with other wrestling fans. Not every wrestling fan watches Lucha or Puro or indies or even promotions with US TV like ROH, LU and even TNA... but everyone watches Raw.
NWK2000 wrote: The reason why I brought up Mick Foley was because he's parroting smark opinions at the minute. And regardless of how valid it might be, it bothers me when people who have been through so much seem to be just parroting opinions like a crochety old man.
I don't think Mick is "parroting" anyone's opinion, and here is why. The beginning of Foley's post was quoting another post Mick himself had made in 2014 about the downfall of Zack Ryder. By 2014, I think that most of us smarks had given up on/forgotten about Zack Ryder. I know I had. When it comes to Ryder (unlike Daniel Bryan), his lack of follow-up did indeed hurt him as most of the people who chanted "WE WANT RYDER!" at arenas around the country in the fall of 2011 and ceased doing so by the fall of 2012.
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Re: 2 Cents: "Smart" marks

Post by cero2k » Nov 29th, '15, 16:28

If you were to ask any average Joe how they would react if a TV show they liked suddenly didn't live up to expectation for months at a time, you'd figure that most intelligent people would stop watching, and no busy themselves with talking about it on a routine basis.
from what i've learned from talking to people around the internet, particularly the haters that keep watching RAW every single week, there is one single reason that prevails. It's Live. People watch RAW because it's live and they'll never know when the next Nexus will debut, when the next CM Punk Shoot Promo will happen. People tune in, regardless if they pay full attention, just for the idea that anything can happen in wrestling and I don't want to miss it when it does. I think it's a big reason why RAWs after big PPVs tend to have big ratings, and Smackdown, Impact, even ROH, that are taped, don't, because spoils get out.
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