Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[DocWager]

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As expected, the wrestling thread is doing nothing but talking about the event last night from WWE, a company they are all "boycotting" and wanted discussion of banned from the forum these people are the "chuds who cannot stop watching wwe" that they complain about

They’re politicking in constructive, brother:

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Alright,

This is probalby 72 hours late - but I was giving it through Royal Rumble to see what happens - I want to talk about the current situation in the Wrestling community thread.

Vince McMahon has been credibly accused of a years long sex trafficing operation of a female employee that is beyond disgusting and the lawsuit alleged complicit knowledge of many wrestlers, staff and executives within the company.    This is on top of decades of knowledge of rapes, murder cover ups, sprots-washing on behalf of Saudi Arabia and all sorts of other dispicable actions.  Last night during the presser after the Rumble HHH (the current head of creative) was dismissive of the allegations against his father-in-law and went so far to say it was an excellent week for the company, that he had not bothered to read the lawsuit and that he was focused on the positives of the company.  This tone deaf response points to the continued troubling behavior of the WWE as a whole.

About 4 years ago the "solution" to people not wanting to hear about WWE was to carve out a special thread for fans of AEW wrestling - however there are other federations that don't systmically cover for monsters like Vince McMahon that some of us would like to talk about (NJPW, TNA, Stardom, AAA, CMLL) and those federations are much more intertwined than WWE is which is far more silo'd off from the rest of the wrestling world.

Threads praising or hyping WWE or its events have long been banned on the site.

Last night during the Royal Rumble the Wrestling OT turned into a defacto hype thread for the royal rumble with many members who simply avoided all discussion of the breaking news about VKM who could not even be bothered to make a passing comment about how awful the news was turned the thread into an unofficial Royal Rumble hype thread.  Its gross, for some of us the behavior of the WWE is extremely triggering and the thread has been awash in hand-wrining about the ethical consumption of media or posts that just blatantly ignore the very fresh very disgusting news and post hype gifs of moments they like on the product.

My request is to spin WWE into its own thread or create a TKO (WWE and UFCs parent company) mega thread so that the rest of us can discuss wrestling federations in peace that dont want to wade through pro WWE posts, flippant disregard for the seriousness of the allegations or content coming from problematic sources (mostly Cornette).   

Era right now has a WWE thread in all but name only, and if moderation isn't comfortable with a WWE thread then thats a seperate question - but you already have one.

I like this post and I agree. If WWE won't be banned here going forward, the next best thing is probably to quarantine it to a separate thread in Hangouts so the shills can all do their male guffaws together at everyone mad about the sex trafficking so they can enjoy their media consumption, and the rest of the wrestling fandom here can be brought together after this catastrophe and move on. That'd be nice.

Completely agree.

Completely agree. I no longer feel comfortable participating in the main Wrasslin thread due to the presence of those who would stick their head in the sand and continue to cheerlead for the WWE. As such, I’m cut off from NJPW discussion, because it and every other promotion save for AEW is lumped in with the WWE.

Please do the right thing and split WWE discussion off into its own thread. Once that is done it may be time to integrate AEW discussion into the main Wrasslin thread as well.

Thanks for your consideration.

Honestly, I couldn't imagine being a woman on this site, reading in very graphic details of the torture that woman went through and seeing that WWE seemingly covered it up as well as not even bother to investigate the issue while having one of their execs basically blow it off saying "let's focus on the positives" and "it's been an exciting week" without being extremely triggered. And it's probably even just as disturbing to have certain posters with a "Oh no, how terrible! Anyways....." reaction to that news.

It's not surprising that posters (especially women) would choose wanting to distance themselves from certain posters praising WWE while ignoring very graphic details of rape the company is complicit in. And since there doesn't seem to be any rules against praising WWE within the wrestling thread, I agree with letting those posters continue to have their love fest with WWE completely separate from other wrestling companies.

As someone who mostly reads and casually posts in both AEW and the General Wrasslin threads, I've found some of the lack of awareness/ignorance from folks posting in the General Wrasslin thread towards the current situation with the Vince McMahon stuff quite shocking. I agree with the idea of creating/readjusting the wrestling discussion threads - given it's approaching the end of the month and the General Wrasslin thread would be getting a reboot for February anyway, it would be the best time to readjust the threads to have an AEW & Wrestling thread and a WWE thread marked with disclaimers on it going forward.

I try not to talk about this, but yeah, the wrestling fandom as a whole is intimidating and honestly depressing as a woman who has dealt with certain abuse, but the people you describe (especially in the past year or so of WWE scandals being pushed under the rug) have almost pushed me out of the fandom entirely. It's horribly depressing seeing this kind of fan in the wild, let alone in a forum like this that prides itself on the diversity of the userbase compared to other places, and would probably consider itself a safe space for them.

Huge +1 to all of this.

Whilst I will miss AEW having its own dedicated thread, I can't help but agree with all of this and so I think this would indeed be the best solution because as it currently stands, the general thread has become a triggering place full of posters who clearly don't give a fuck about not only these allegations but the decades worth of systematic abuse and covering up by those in charge of the company.

Too many posters will stay away whenever the serious topics are discussed and then suddenly pop up to fish about the product.

Most frustrating of all, we constantly get defences saying that hardly anyone posts about WWE and that it's mainly about other companies but that is a flat out lie as there is always discussions on WWE and it's product going on.

Separating WWE from the rest of pro wrestling discussion is very much needed. While WWE is experiencing a surge in popularity there are very valid reasons outside of the content of the product itself for one to want to avoid any discussion of it. There are a great many things to discuss across professional wrestling and it's very hard having those discussions in a general thread that is so heavily focused on the much larger and very much more problematic WWE.

talking about what wrestling companies should and shouldn’t be allowed to be discussed seems like an impossible task

do we disallow AAA talk because they continue to roster Cuatrero despite him beating the shit out of his girlfriend (who is also a wrestler) and she feared for her life? or because they continue to book repeat domestic abuser Alberto El Patron?

Is it platforming horrible people? Is it featuring them prominently? Is it the company itself continuing to use them in spite of the knowledge?

The WWE stuff is undoubtedly terrible but wrestling is an awful business mostly filled with awful people, and almost no company is exempt from that. Goes for NJPW’s history, goes for AAA and CMLL, and goes for WWE.

If we’re banning discussion of one, what is the line where we should have that conversation about others?

I think there is a difference between problematic individuals and the systemic abuse of women that the company itself was a critical component in enabling - including sham investigations, years long sex trafficking by the CEO, complicit knowledge of bad behavior, pay offs coming from the company coffers and more.

Yes Albert del Rio is a piece of shit.  Yes there are bad actors in wrestling. 

What were asking for is to be able to talk about wrestling without a lot of people complaining about us yucking their yum while they cheer on WWE product less than 48 hours after a really really really vile story broke as though nothing happened.

It doesn't help that the head of booking for WWE basically acted the same as the posters.

WWE is in the Weinstein company levels of vile.  This isn't 'oh this actor in the movie is bad' this is the company itself is bad.

“Stooge” the absolute perfect name.

Where were these fucks during the ring boy scandal, Snuka’s girlfriend being murdered, and Vince covering it up because they were about to land a national deal? Or how about…