Online Wrestling Discussion (Community)

[BillThompson]

I've been thinking about writing about how wrestling discussion has grown in recent years. And by grown I mean become much better than it used to be in the early 2000s. However, today I got to thinking, has it really grown and gotten better? Am I insulated in the PWO (sometimes DVDVR/VoW/TWF) bubble and don't see that things haven't really changed? Is it just that I've chosen to surround myself with people like Charles, Dylan, Sam, Lee, Kris, Tim, Pocket Vampire, the VoW crew, the PWP crew, and so on and so forth that is truly making the difference? I'd love to think that discussing wrestling online has gotten much better in 2014 when compared to 2004, but has it really?

[concrete1992]

I know you probably were going to post this anyway but it is indeed a heck of a day to do it haha. But yeah, I think ON THE WHOLE it is easier to surround yourself with good discussion.

[rovert]

I think it has been one of benefits of social media is that it got people from various message boards intermingling with each other. There's a tendency to view the first big message board you encounter as "it" in terms of Wrestling discussion in general. For example you get the threads on DVDR to F4W to Wreddit to WrestlingForum to even /wooo occasionally posting threads asking "do you think anyone from WWE reads this forum" and then most of the replies are "oh they have to".

 

I do like on Twitter the ability to retweet a tweet from user to share their opinion, column or podcast with my followers. Great little referral system that.

[Steenalized]

The biggest thing is that it's easier to find good discussion now. Like rovert said, social media/twitter plays a big part of that. There are still lots of terrible discussions going on (look at the F4W board and that's not even close to the worst), but I can easily find a place like this with a quick google search that incidentally brings me here. Pretty sure it was googling a wrestler's name that brought me to PWO at first.

[Jesse Ewiak]

There are still good places, but most places are still pretty bad. Look over at Reddit's Squared Circle subreddit. It's mostly rehashing the same arguments people were having on RSPW in 1995 and various message boards in 2005. Cena's still a horrible wrestler and buries people, Ziggler still isn't getting pushed right, midcard flavor of the week should get a megapush, and so on, and so forth.

 

Yeah, there are places like here that are better, but this is still a niche of a niche of a niche of a niche.

[Coffey]

When I first started talking about pro-wrestling online, it was back at the end of 1999 and I was posting on WrestlingGames.com -- which I found via a search engine because I was looking up stuff for WCW/NWO Revenge on Nintendo 64. Then I posted a lot on this forum called The Wall (previously Dragonlair.org) ran by some mullet-having Canadian and his two nephews or some shit. Sek was there and artDDP.

 

So yeah, from there to here my online discussions have gotten better. I have also learned a lot more though & things are more widely available now. Back then, before their deal with TNN, ECW wasn't very easy for me to see outside of tape trading. I had a 56k internet connection & it occupied my parents phone line so I could not stay on for long periods of time. Times have changed a lot.

 

I was eventually on TheSmartMarks.com, DVDVR and a few other places. There's always people you agree with & disagree with. I got a ton of shit on TSM for defending Val Venis & thinking he had all the tools to be a main eventer.

[Petey]

I also posted on WG! And WWFWG/GamingRing. I feel like there was another one from that 2000/2001 time period that I'm forgetting.

 

I think like Rovert and others have said, social media has done a good job exposing multiple viewpoints on things and that's been largely for the best. I'm relatively young to the IWC (I'm 27, didn't start really posting on message boards until I was 12 or 13, never knew about RSPW until way after the fact), but I think that while there are still a lot of places where they just use the same internet tropes about Cena and the guys they like not being pushed enough, there's a lot more critical discussion of wrestlers/matches/companies/whatever and also a wider variety which has led to less singular "IWC bubble" opinions.

[sek69]

When I first started talking about pro-wrestling online, it was back at the end of 1999 and I was posting on WrestlingGames.com -- which I found via a search engine because I was looking up stuff for WCW/NWO Revenge on Nintendo 64. Then I posted a lot on this forum called The Wall (previously Dragonlair.org) ran by some mullet-having Canadian and his two nephews or some shit. Sek was there and artDDP.

 

 

 

 

Yeah, those were the days.

 

 

I think back in the early days there was more of an "exclusive club" feel since not everyone had access to watch stuff that wasn't shown on TV locally. It certainly lead to a higher quality discussion once the playing field leveled and it just wasn't a select few who were able to talk knowledgeably on various subjects.

[overbooked]

I think YouTube has really changed things. There were plenty of discussions ten years ago that ended up with someone saying "Watch the tapes", and generally there were those people who had the finances to buy lots of footage/had spent a lot of time trading, with others playing catch-up. There is more of a level playing field now as so much more stuff is accessible, and accessible immediately. So, there are perhaps fewer people working on speculation, and fewer people as 'gatekeepers' who can influence a discussion as they've seen the most stuff. It doesn't take long to prove a point, or disprove one.

[pol]

And yet, sadly, there's still a ton of people out there whose knowledge of wrestling is very limited in scope, have little interest in learning about stuff outside of their comfort zone, yet are still willing to make objective claims about this and that, typically lent confidence by being on the side of Meltzer/smark consensus. But that's true of pretty much anything I guess.

[goc]

There are still a lot of places out there where it seems like there's an immediate dismissal of any wrestler that didn't work for WWF or WCW at some point. As if that's the only way to measure greatness, whether a guy worked on national TV.

[Coffey]

I feel bad for those people; never giving wrestlers like Misawa, Kawada or Kobashi a chance, in example. When I got my early 90's AJPW VHS comp. tape from Goodhelmet years ago, it changed my entire perspective of professional wrestling. I never want to go back!

[Strummer]

does anyone remember the "big 3" newsboard in around 98/99? I actually got into an e-mail "battle" with one of the posters there which ended with him "resigning" from the board after I bet him RAW would beat Nitro in the ratings. (if RAW won he had to leave the board) . Oh 1999

[Sidebottom]

I've been using message boards / user groups on and off since the late 90's. I'm nowhere into the scene as what I used to be due to family these days. But from my experience, users make the boards. I have seen some fine communities crumble due to a few good eggs leaving and a few bad eggs coming in and putting their feet on the table. From there, the remaining decent posters silently leave the community due to the bad smell.

[EvenStevenBooking]

I have seen some fine communities crumble due to a few good eggs leaving and a few bad eggs coming in and putting their feet on the table. From there, the remaining decent posters silently leave the community due to the bad smell.

See: DVDVR. It was going downhill, but it's never seemed to recover from that server crash that wiped everything out a year ago. The main wrestling board isn't really all that better than the GameFAQs WWE board these days. The trolls took over and when the admins finally got around to banning them, the board pretty much devolved to "OPINIONZ 4 U" and races to start that weeks RAW thread.