The Disturbing Truth Behind Vince McMahon Selling WWE
The chaotic, fitful essence of WWE in 2021 will calm the f*ck down.
This is less a "corporate values" issue and more of a "Vince McMahon has totally lost it" issue. But the spirit of old-school pro wrestling will not be repurposed and realise itself with intricate storylines and the like. WWE is not a passion project.
It functions to yield content, and as is acutely clear whenever anybody presses Tweet on any negative thought, WWE has established a horde of ultra-defensive hardcores that will literally purchase anything it sells, the less like wrestling the better.
When Bayley appeared on every LED ThunderDome monitor with her laughing visage, one impressed YouTube commenter bemoaned the fact that this sort of thing can't happen when crowds return. There are WWE fans who don't want...themselves to return to the interactive live environment of a pro wrestling show.
The game is gone, and the absolute toxicity of wrestling discourse on social media might have something to do with the fact that WWE's base doesn’t know what the game is or was. There is a new generation of WWE fans that might actually refer to it as sports entertainment, and it is this generation, who somehow prefer new episodes of The Simpsons, that WWE will continue to cater for in the years to come. There's money in this "we're not a wrestling company" thing. More money than ever, depressingly.
The total failure and indeed reluctance to recognise pro wrestling as pro wrestling has informed this dire era of WWE - and the conversations surrounding it - and the sterile quality to the show is then, now, forever.