Back in the late 1990s WWE managed to stumble into a new boom period by latching onto the cultural trend of car crash TV. This coincided with the rise of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and he became the face of their new attitude era which redefined what was possible in wrestling and became a key part of popular culture.
Time has since moved on and the likes of Jerry Springer and Jackass are no longer as popular. Although WWE have since ditched their increasingly desperate attempts to be shocking (even necrophilia couldn’t get mainstream news coverage) and have moved back to a PG rated product they are still using many of the same tactics that were last truly successful in the attitude era. Many would say they been floundering while looking for the next big thing and once again they may have stumbled across it.
For many years the world has been seen the rise of social networking and every major company wants a piece of the action. WWE now seems ready to make the most of their almost unique position within the television industry that will enable them to benefit from the internet and social media.
The biggest advantage they have is that WWE is set in our world and takes place in real-time. Game of Thrones has a huge cast but it’s more minor members can’t tweet in order to flesh out their characters as King’s landing doesn’t have internet access. Even a show like Dr Who which is unbound by the trivialities of space and time doesn’t allow Amy Pond to blog about the latest revelations contained in a shocking cliff-hanger ending as the story will continue in six months time.
Just as advantageous is the fact that people are more or less playing themselves and usually only have that one role, some TV shows have experimented with characters having twitter accounts but as they’re played by an actor that appears in other roles and doesn’t have time to type the updates themselves they aren’t as effective. Most wrestlers don’t have this problem so it creates a new form of kayfabe.
WWE are finally realising their advantage and are starting to exploit it in a genuinely innovative way with CM Punk leaving WWE with their world championship.
After the initial “shoot” that featured Punk criticising WWE and the McMahon family they promoted the angle by following it up online, they did this by posting a story about Vince McMahon suspending Punk, removing all traces of him from WWE.com (the roster page, his bio, facebook etc) and even taking down his theme from itunes.
It’s amazing what a buzz this caused and it’s even more amazing that in 2011 so many fans were speculating if something they saw on a wrestling show was is in fact “real”. The mere mention of Colt Cabana in a promo was enough for him to become a trending topic on twitter.
Now Punk has officially left the company they can move away from the official avenues and explore what is possible outside WWE’s bubble, we’ve seen the first instance of this with a youtube video of CM Punk “Invading” WWE’s comic-con panel.
WWE initially trusted this to work as a viral video by deciding not to report the confrontation it on their own website, luckily for them another one of their major advantages is that wrestling fans have a strong online presence and as result this video has attracted almost 400,000 views in just over 24 hours.
While WWE can continue the angle on TV with HHH as the on-screen boss of the company Punk could become almost ubiquitous with fans being able to follow their favourite anti-hero’s exploits as he crashes WWE press conferences and signings, appears in other media (including Colt Cabana’s podcast) with his title and possibly shows up in another wrestling organisation (most likely to be RoH).
Of course using the internet like this isn’t a completely new phenomenon but is probably the first major angle where so many of the key players (and their fans) have a platform to contribute to the overall story. There have been many updates directly from CM Punk that have ranged from him foreshadowing events to posting pictures of his victory celebration. Add to this WWE.com’s updates, viral youtube videos, mainstream news coverage (it had a prominent position on ESPNs homepage) and comments from other wrestlers that even included Punk’s long-term twitter rival Steve Austin saying how much he enjoyed his work.
These little touches are great way to build interest and make the story seem legitimate.
However wrestling hasn’t always had the best of relationships with the internet, back when AOL ruled the information super highway Vince McMahon had a few issues with a live web chat that resulted in our favourite eccentric millionaire ranting to himself for 10 minutes and Steve Austin used WWE’s webshow byte this as a platform to air his grievances with the writing team (he walked out on the company shortly afterwards).
Maybe this is why not everybody within the wrestling business is so keen on scary new technology with some making negative comments about their online fans who Eric Bischoff has named the “IWC ten percenters” who he believes are the tiny part (ie 10%) of their fan base that aren’t satisfied with their product. Although this is probably just Bischofff following his “Controversy creates cash” mantra it does seem strange to turn against online wrestling fans at a time their numbers are increasing due to the rise of social networking (especially as at one point TNA only had online fans as they weren’t on TV). It’s almost sad that somebody who was once so revolutionary is now wasting time defining the x-division rather than once again attempting to redefine how people experience wrestling.
That's right I'm a Paul Heyman guy!
Luckily others haven’t been as short-sighted.
The Miz has delivered many promos about him being hated when he first joined WWE and that he feared that he would soon be wished well in his future endeavours. This resulted in him and John Morrison creating their web-show The Dirt Sheet. This gave two overlooked superstars the chance to shine and arguably saved their careers.
This tactic has since been attempted by many others; some failed like the aforementioned Colt Cabana while Matt Hardy put his own unique spin on the idea to get himself released from his contract, not to be deterred Colt has since started his own podcast which has been more successful having recently celebrated it’s one year anniversary by interviewing the one wrestler that has arguably benefited the most from the use of social media the internet champion Zack Ryder.
Poor Zack’s career had been stagnant but he may have saved his job by building himself a huge following among fans, he reached out to his fans on twitter by offering autographs to anybody who bought his t-shirt. He built on this with his youtube show “Z! True Long Island Story” where he regularly has more than 100,000 views for his videos and has reached over 3 million views in total. Even wrestlers in the upper echelons of the company enjoy his work, John Cena promotes Ryder via twitter and by making cameos in Zack’s videos and if you watched the earlier video you’ll have seen CM Punk ask HHH when he is going to put Ryder on TV.
The internet is so embedded in Zack’s character that he wears a QR code on his clothes that links to his facebook page, he has also made a catchphrase of asking people to follow him on twitter and like him on facebook (followed with buy the t-shirt and take care, spike your hair).
Of course there are potential drawbacks to this new approach. There’s always a risk that being too open and approachable ruins the mystique of pro-wrestling as you can’t imagine the Undertaker tweeting about his shopping trip with Michelle McCool.
It’s also possible that WWE will overplay their hand and force this approach on everybody rather than letting it grow naturally.
There are also many wrestlers that have misused social media to make bitter comments or gay slurs and that doesn’t help anybody.
However used correctly it can develop characters, further feuds and offer wrestlers a platform to stand out from the crowd.
Wrestling and the internet are now entwined for as long as they both shall live and although the relationship has been slow to grow and has had its rocky moments wrestling should benefit from their union in a way that other TV shows can only dream of. Just like the late 90s WWE are in a perfect place where they can take advantage of the changes of popular culture and their new superstar CM Punk.
Who knows when it comes to Wrestlemania we could see Steve Austin vs CM Punk not only represent straight edge vs beer swilling redneck or the meeting of past and present but the leader of attitude era vs the figurehead of the internet era.
