Comments that don't warrant a thread

[Al]

Good point. I'd say wrestlers were more likely to get challenged face to face by people who knew/felt it was fake.

[Cox]

Just a random thought I just had; now that the Olympics are going to be taking place in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, does that mean that there is finally going to be a wrestling tournament held in Rio that isn't made up?

[Jingus]

I should also point out that there is a difference between job where emotional management is aimed at making customer feel well liked/wanted (Hooters) and one where job is getting customer angry.

That's the closest I've found to a genuine explanation. I tried to sit down and think of other forms of entertainment in which half the show's goals involve deliberately pissing off the paying customers, and really there aren't many besides purorasslin.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

I should also point out that there is a difference between job where emotional management is aimed at making customer feel well liked/wanted (Hooters) and one where job is getting customer angry.

That's the closest I've found to a genuine explanation. I tried to sit down and think of other forms of entertainment in which half the show's goals involve deliberately pissing off the paying customers, and really there aren't many besides purorasslin.

 

Chicago Cubs? Oakland Raiders? Los Angeles Clipers? Sometimes I think these three teams sole reason for existing is to infuriate their own fanbases.

[KrisZ]

Read the Midnight Express book and look at the stories Corny tells about running the roads of Mid-South fearing for their lives almost every show.

Do you think a lot of these stories are exaggerated? I'm not saying there weren't incidents in the past, but I think a lot of "the whole crowd wanted to legit kill me" and "I had to run for my life" stories have a big fish element to them. If crowds were as bad as some of the old wrestlers describe, there would've been military troops in riot gear at each show.

 

Too many different people have stories surrounding the Mid-South area and their fans rowdiness in different eras. Police would harass the heels on the roads, fans would chase them out of town, it was pretty bad.

[Tim Evans]

I should also point out that there is a difference between job where emotional management is aimed at making customer feel well liked/wanted (Hooters) and one where job is getting customer angry.

That's the closest I've found to a genuine explanation. I tried to sit down and think of other forms of entertainment in which half the show's goals involve deliberately pissing off the paying customers, and really there aren't many besides purorasslin.

 

Stand-Up Comedy? Fred Phelps?

[Jingus]

I did consider stand-up, since that is another place where the performers often barely even try to hide their contempt for the audience. But even in that cynical field, an intentional provacateur like Andy Kaufman is considered to be unusual. Compared to wrestling, where there's typically at least one guy in every match who tries his hardest to make us hate him.

[Dylan Waco]

It's pretty much the same thing indeed.

Then again, maybe the stripper/wrestler comparison will bother some people. Remember how the infamous Flair thread ended up after some pron comparison were made.

The problem in that thread wasn't any comparison.

[El-P]

I should also point out that there is a difference between job where emotional management is aimed at making customer feel well liked/wanted (Hooters) and one where job is getting customer angry.

That's the closest I've found to a genuine explanation. I tried to sit down and think of other forms of entertainment in which half the show's goals involve deliberately pissing off the paying customers, and really there aren't many besides purorasslin.

 

France national soccer team matches.

[tomk]

I should also point out that there is a difference between job where emotional management is aimed at making customer feel well liked/wanted (Hooters) and one where job is getting customer angry.

That's the closest I've found to a genuine explanation. I tried to sit down and think of other forms of entertainment in which half the show's goals involve deliberately pissing off the paying customers, and really there aren't many besides purorasslin.

 

 

 

Rafaeli, Anat and Robert I. Sutton. 1991. “Emotional Contrast Strategies as a Means of Social Influence: Lessons from Criminal Interrogators

and Bill Collectors.” Academy of Management Journal 34

 

These things aren’t perfect comparisons.

 

A police suspect doesn’t have a drunken crowd egging him on to heckle the guy playing the role of bad cop/cheer on (help) the guy playing good cop.

 

But no two jobs are exactly identical. And I have to think that there is a reason so many retired wrestlers go into evangelical preaching ( crowd emotion management/"social influence" is transferable skill). I imagine if you gave Tully Blanchard or Ivan Kolloff breast implants, they’d be really good at milking money out of Hooters customers. They’re top level pros and know how to work.

[Bix]

Criminal interrogation and bill collection aren't genres of entertainment.

[tomk]

These things aren’t perfect comparisons.

Hooters waitress is for most part considered customer service and not entertainer.

Evangelic preacher aren't normally classified as entertainers either.

But mechanics similar.

[Jingus]

Tom, what point are you even trying to make here? You're just listing examples of anything where human beings manipulate the emotions of other human beings for purposes of their job. You can find nearly infinite examples of that, I'm waiting for you to compare used car salesmen to wrestlers since they're both trying to work the mark.

[Loss]

Tom, what point are you even trying to make here? You're just listing examples of anything where human beings manipulate the emotions of other human beings for purposes of their job. You can find nearly infinite examples of that, I'm waiting for you to compare used car salesmen to wrestlers since they're both trying to work the mark.

He made his point clearly a while back. People know something to be true, but aren't above being worked into a frenzy because they're caught up in the moment. This is not different from watching a movie and getting angry at the villain. I'm sure your response to that is that you don't see people attacking the actor in public, and that's true, but there isn't going to be an exact comparison, because wrestling is wrestling and everything else is everything else.

[Jingus]

I don't see how it's relevant. The entire start of this discussion was me saying 1.I don't understand how anyone ever thought that wrestling was real, 2.there really have been a whole shitload of such people, I know this for a personal fact since I have met many of them, and 3.wrestling's disproportionately high number of incidents with fans assaulting the promoters, significantly higher than in any other similar field you can name, would seem to back up the first two points. Talking about Hooters girls and televangelists doesn't have anything to do with those issues.

[tomk]

1) Hooters girls are blatantly fake, people trick themselves into believing that their flirtation is real.

 

2) There are a shitload of people who are worked into tipping waitresses at Hooters more than they tip a normal waitress with better quality wings.

 

3) People stalk and sexually assualt Hooters waitresses.

[Jingus]

And?

 

1. Wrestling is formerly a fixed sport, now an openly fictional entertainment media. It's a spectacle of violence. It has absolutely nothing specifically in common with some girl putting her arm around your shoulder while you order your buffalo wings. Your definition of "working" here is so broad and all-inclusive that you could make the comparison to anything. Like, as I mentioned before, used car salesmen. Or anything where one person is being less than 100% open and truthful in their dealings with another person, for any reason at all.

 

2. I don't see any relevance here, no matter how tenuous. Men go to Hooters not for the food, but because they're gonna get to eat the food while ogling the servers' cleavage and asscheeks. It's a more socially acceptable alternative to a strip club.

 

3. Utterly pointless. Yes, men stalk and sexually assault women. Not exactly breaking news there. I don't think it's because of the "work" like you're implying here. Stalkers tend to specifically fixate upon a single particular individual, and mentally imbue them with the stalker's own deranged fantasies of how this is the Perfect Girl and such. I don't think their flirting while bringing you a pitcher of beer has any real impact on that. If Hooters waitresses are stalked and attacked at any higher rate than women who don't work there, my argument would be that it was only because a stalker is more likely to meet the type of girl he's likely to fixate upon at Hooters since they employ only hot young women and then dress them in skimpy clothing so they stand out more, so it's a ready pool of potential victims.

 

And even if this Hooters discussion had any light to shed on the wrestling discussion, which it does not, it still doesn't begin to address my original point about wrestlers getting attacked at a much higher rate than any performer in any remotely similar job. Just about any wrestler who's been in the game for more than a couple years has at least one if not several true stories of having to fight off violent fans. I doubt that the vast majority of veteran Hooters waitresses can say the same thing.

[Loss]

Hooters girls are blatantly fake, people trick themselves into believing that their flirtation is real.

Wrestling is blatantly fake, people trick themselves into believing that what they're seeing is real.

 

There are a shitload of people who are worked into tipping waitresses at Hooters more than they tip a normal waitress with better quality wings.

There are a shitload of people who are worked into getting angrier at heels who are great at their job than those who are merely good.

 

People stalk and sexually assualt Hooters waitresses.

People pick fights with wrestlers.

 

Do you still not see the correlation?

 

I will also add that part of the wrestler attacks may be *because* they see it as fake, not because they're worked up. In many of those old-time stories, some drunk idiot was out to prove that those tough guys weren't so tough after all.

[Jingus]

Do you still not see the correlation?

Not even remotely. Entirely different models of human behaviour, with different contexts, different motivations, different goals, different psychological profiles, different everything.

 

I will also add that part of the wrestler attacks may be *because* they see it as fake, not because they're worked up. In many of those old-time stories, some drunk idiot was out to prove that those tough guys weren't so tough after all.

Oh yeah, that's a given, of course. But I was never talking about them. My simple comment was "I don't understand why anyone ever thought wrestling was real", followed by pages of people insisting that nobody ever thought it was real, no sir, never no-how. Which is demonstrably untrue.

[Dylan Waco]

Are there mildly retarded rednecks in the mountains of East Tennessee who sleep with their second cousins, consume meth like water, and think wrestling is real? Yes. But that is a small, small, small, small, small portion of the fan base.

 

Hooters analogy is in no way a bad analogy. Also anyone who has ever worked any sort of food service would confirm the prevalence of creepy pervs, serial molesters, foot fetishists, et that harrass and assault female workers. Almost across the board this happens to the nicer girls who for the most are "working" a gimmick of sorts, as 90 percent of food and bev is filled with deeply cynical people. If anything they get attacked/groped/et. more often than wrestlers.

[Jingus]

Are there mildly retarded rednecks in the mountains of East Tennessee who sleep with their second cousins, consume meth like water, and think wrestling is real? Yes. But that is a small, small, small, small, small portion of the fan base.

What's with the racist anti-Southern shit you keep bringing up? (I say "racist" since there isn't an equitable term for the geography-based predjudice you're showing here.) That's twice now from you in this one discussion, and you don't even seem to be joking.

 

And believe me, no, you don't have to be literally retarded in order to think it's real. That's what you clearly don't get. I've known many folks who were perfectly functional members of society who Truly Believed. Sure, they were not Mensa members. But I mean, even some who went to college. That's what I've been talking about this entire time. Seemingly ordinary humans, perhaps a bit dim but not actually handicapped, who genuinely thought that wrestling matches were real fights.

 

Hooters analogy is in no way a bad analogy. Also anyone who has ever worked any sort of food service would confirm the prevalence of creepy pervs, serial molesters, foot fetishists, et that harrass and assault female workers. Almost across the board this happens to the nicer girls who for the most are "working" a gimmick of sorts, as 90 percent of food and bev is filled with deeply cynical people. If anything they get attacked/groped/et. more often than wrestlers.

I've worked in food service many times. It is a bad analogy, and no, they don't get assaulted anywhere near as often as wrestlers do.

[Dylan Waco]

"Racist," anti-Southerner? I'm struggling to think of a more inaccurate description one could give a person. So far I've got nothing.

 

I'm from the hills of East Tennessee originally. All of my family lives in Chattanooga and the area around it. My favorite band of all time is Lynyrd Skynyrd and I regularly listen to Hank Williams Jr. I openly refer to myself as a punk rock redneck when people ask me about my cultural background. In my capacity as a semi-relevant current affairs writer and commentator I've spoken to the Sons of Confederate Veterans multiple times (granted one of those times was a decentralist defense of John Brown and Robert Williams, but I'm an advocate of autonomy movements, not racial caste systems). My best friend is a well known political commentator nicknamed The Southern Avenger. I've written thousands of words on the numerous attempts to denigrate Southern culture. I'm an advocate of regional secession movements, and would prefer that my home state of South Carolina become it's own country. I've spent hours and hours researching various aspects of Southern history, working with the local Gullah community on historic preservation issues, et. My favorite style of wrestling is traditional Southern tag wrestling. I'm not anti-Southern at all. If anything I'm a philo-Southerner.

 

And the fact that I am a Southerner, who has lived and traveled throughout all of the South is what I base my comments on. As said before my family is from Chattanooga. I was born in East Ridge. I've been to shows there and in Rossville, GA (Terry Gordy's home town) and in Cleveland and in other areas of North Georgia/East Tennessee. There are many stereotypical Southerners that live in these areas and a lot of them happen to believe wrestling is real. But they are a small portion of Southerners and they are a small portion of the overall fan base.

 

My Uncle promoted shows in East Tennessee. Red Bank is the meth capital of the U.S. That part of Appalachia is one of the only areas of the country where sex between cousins is NOT totally unheard of. I know what I've seen and lived. Doesn't mean I hate the South.

 

Also I'm sorry but the argument that food service workers aren't harrassed/assaulted as often as pro wrestling is a point of view that is totally unrepresentative of the World I live in. I doubt a survey of 1000 food service workers with even a casual knowledge of pro wrestling would result in more than ten people coming to the same conclusion you have here.

[Tim Evans]

And believe me, no, you don't have to be literally retarded in order to think it's real. That's what you clearly don't get. I've known many folks who were perfectly functional members of society who Truly Believed. Sure, they were not Mensa members. But I mean, even some who went to college. That's what I've been talking about this entire time. Seemingly ordinary humans, perhaps a bit dim but not actually handicapped, who genuinely thought that wrestling matches were real fights.

Maybe they want to believe so much that they refuse to believe it's fake? I mean some people believe 9/11 is a inside job and the Holocaust isn't weird and some of these people are "college educated".

[Jingus]

"Racist," anti-Southerner? I'm struggling to think of a more inaccurate description one could give a person.

Subconciously self-loathing, then? Because despite all your credentials, you twice hit up the same "stupid fuckin' rednecks" stereotypes that so many yankees often make such an annoying habit out of.

 

Also I'm sorry but the argument that food service workers aren't harrassed/assaulted as often as pro wrestling is a point of view that is totally unrepresentative of the World I live in. I doubt a survey of 1000 food service workers with even a casual knowledge of pro wrestling would result in more than ten people coming to the same conclusion you have here.

I'm just telling you exactly what I've seen, man. In all my time working in various food service gigs, I have never once seen a customer physically assault an employee. In wrestling, it's happened so many times that I literally couldn't remember them all if I wanted to count the examples I have personally witnessed.

 

Maybe they want to believe so much that they refuse to believe it's fake? I mean some people believe 9/11 is a inside job and the Holocaust isn't weird and some of these people are "college educated".

Yeah, there are accredited college professors who believe shit like that. I don't understand this bizarre unwillingness to admit that anyone but a legitimately retarded person might possibly have ever thought that wrestling wasn't fake.

[Tim Evans]

Yeah, there are accredited college professors who believe shit like that. I don't understand this bizarre unwillingness to admit that anyone but a legitimately retarded person might possibly have ever thought that wrestling wasn't fake.

That's not true. I've had many friends believe like that.

 

Didn't you work for Boy Tony Falk in that run down shitty haunted hotel that USWO used to run? Probably most of the people that attacked you was his family and have rabies or something?