10 Ways WWE Treats Its Fans Like Idiots
WWE is not technically a children's show... so why does it feel like one?
The bigger a company gets, the more disconnected it can feel from its audience. Especially the case if the people in charge have been in their positions for a long time. It's easy to overuse what was once a clever idea, but it guarantees it will become formulaic.
Therein lies the biggest issue: an unchallenged audience will feel embarrassed by how you talk to them.
According to reports, the average age of a WWE fan is in their 50s - so why does WWE programming talk down its audience like its a children's show? Shouldn't it strive to surprise, entertain and amaze? Instead fans are treated to the same tired dynamics and shortcuts.
This list is going to go hard on some of WWE's worst aspects in the way that it speaks to and interacts with its audience. From the stories it tells and how it tells them, to presentation details that leave the WWE universe unfulfilled. Hopefully, with changes coming in the future, we can all look back on this list and laugh.
All the same, these problems have been a part of WWE programming for a long time now and the company treating its audience like they all share a single brain cell is a part of WWE history.
10. Constant Recaps
Let’s start with the thing that almost certainly comes to mind when you think about WWE treating its audience like children. We’ve heard for years about Vince McMahon’s tendency to suddenly get bored of an idea or desire to tear up scripts on a whim hours before a show airs, but that shouldn’t mean that the company assumes its audience has a complete lack of attention span as well.
Doing things that imply as such, like the never ending recaps of moments that just happened, actually has a Pavlovian effect on your viewers. You’re telling them that it doesn’t matter if they pay that much attention because they’ll just be shown what happened again and again anyway.
Whether WWE fans get the luxury of a commercial break or a backstage segment before the recap shows or not, they’re obnoxious at the best of times and total tedium at worst. It’s become frustratingly common that a segment will finish, be recapped and then after coming back from commercial will be recapped again.
Filling a three hour episode of Raw is a challenging thing for any booker but cheap tricks like spending minutes of the program showing previous events is just tiring. Fans may as well go and watch the YouTube clips of the show as they’ll see all the major moments - but only see them once!