5 Ups And 9 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (June 8th)
7. Virtual Pat On The Back
WWE loves to do its best Barry Horowitz impersonation whenever it comes to its social media prowess. The company spent Monday nights Raw celebrating that it had reached 500 million followers across all its social media platforms. That certainly sounds impressive, especially when you consider that Katy Perry has 70 million Twitter followers and Shakira has 100 million Facebook fans. However, you need to take this news with a grain of salt. WWE is counting all of its social media platforms, which includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, Foursquare, Tumblr, Snapchat and Pinterest, and each social media account for each of its performers. That means John Cenas 37 million Facebook fans and 7.1 million Twitter followers get added in with everyone elses (including El Toritos 50,800 Twitter followers) to arrive at 500 million. And as a simple side note, does this milestone mean anything to anyone? It certainly doesnt matter to television advertisers, who only care about Raw and Smackdown ratings, and it doesnt do anything to help WWEs bottom line, like adding 1 million subscriptions to the WWE Network would do. So, much like poor Barry Horowitz, this self-pat on the back has little meaning.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
