10 Things Everybody Gets Wrong About WWE

5. "That Crowd Was Dead..."

"Man, that crowd was dead last night."

No.

The product is dead. The onus isn't on the crowd to get stars over; the onus is on the promotion. These entities are called wrestling promotions. If WWE could effectively promote talent, the crowds might react to that talent as if they were stars. Post-Pittsburgh, there's no such thing as a dead crowd. It's another lap in a long, exhausting race to defend the product. Why buy a ticket?

Here's another question: why defend the promotion?

Crowds want to react. People don't buy tickets to expensive entertainment events to just sit there, listless, bored. A certain inhibition creeps over the average person in this context. It's the responsibility - the job - of the entertainer to remedy this. WWE makes it incredibly difficult for their contracted talent to do this: the written material is contrived, the in-ring action is formulaic and often performed in a certain gear, and the lack of continuity makes investing in storylines effectively impossible. The "Aaaaand it's gone" South Park guy might as well host WWE Backstage at this point.

"Man, that guy died. RIP. Maybe I shouldn't have bludgeoned him with that mallet, just then."

FTFY.