8 Things WWE Can Learn From Star Wars: The Force Awakens

5. Don€™t Crap All Over The Most Devoted Fans

George Lucas has delivered most of his Star Wars material since the end of the first trilogy with complete indifference to the fans. The uproar over the wholly unnecessary changes to the original trilogy, and then again over the prequels still leaves him baffled today. He€™s convinced himself that millions of fans of his characters and the universe he created don€™t understand what he€™s trying to accomplish or - worse - don€™t understand Star Wars at all. Essentially, Lucas completely failed to engage with his fans... but then that's what happens when you're the biggest independent filmmaker in the world, self-financing your own fan fiction. Why would you listen to anyone else? Why would you care? Disney and J.J. Abrams have listened to Star Wars fans - hell, it seems that everyone involved in making The Force Awakens actually is a Star Wars fan, and many of them, like Oscar Isaac, are genuine Star Wars nerds. The result is a Star Wars movie for us. Call it pandering, call it targeting your demographic: but finally, the majority of Star Wars nuts the world over have a Star Wars movie that they can get behind. Just as television changed wrestling in the 1940s, and cable television changed wrestling again in the 1980s, the Internet and the rise of the smart fan has fundamentally changed the way that professional wrestling works. The trouble is, WWE still refuse to acknowledge that. JBL, Triple H, Joey Styles and others keep referring to the 'Internet fans' as being a separate subset of vocal fans, treating them with contempt. There are trolls, obviously - but that's a function of being online and working in social media and online fan interaction of any kind, not just wrestling. Everyone's online now: people are talking to each other about the wrestling from all over the world, using laptops and tablets and their bloody phones. The IWC isn't a thing anymore: it€™s a term that€™s been out of date for ten years, yet Styles - WWE€™s Vice President of Digital Media Content, no less - horribly embarrassed himself by using it only last week. In 2016, all kinds of wrestling fans talk about WWE online. We love wrestling, for a variety of different reasons, and we love talking - and arguing - about it. WWE's old-fashioned view on 'Internet fans' and contempt for the kind of people that form the bedrock of their fanbase is counterproductive and foolish.