About
Being a pro-wrestling fan with internet access in 2025 is an often overwhelming experience. Your pocket computer is pushing the most recent articles from every blog or news site you've ever clicked by accident. Your social media feeds are full of other people sharing these articles, with their similar opinions attached. Then comes a surge of differing opinions, which is probably getting followed by some name calling. Soon, there will be posts about "tribalism" or "hypocrisy" or some other cliche talking point. No matter what night of the week, there's likely to be a wrestling show to post through, if you're interested. Maybe that story carries over to the next day, maybe there's a new story to restart the cycle.
Maybe the "story" isn't about the product itself, but something said by a Prominent Opinion Haver in the industry. Now we must scrutinize the Opinion Haver in question, why they would use their Prominence so haphazardly or what they stand to gain from making such statements publicly.
In either case, lines are drawn in the digital sand, identities defined by allegiance to various promotions and Opinion Havers, fragmenting the "Internet Wrestling Community" into something completely antithetical to actual "community". When what's referred to as a "community" is nothing but a constant firehose of hot-takes, reactions to those hot-takes, and the reactions to counter those hot-takes, the spectacle of "engaging in debate" replaces anything real and tangible that can be learned from these discussions. The need to feel like the first person to publicly state an opinion deems context and factual accuracy unimportant.
The contrast of this superficial experience against an art form with the depth of professional wrestling is ironic, if not maddening. For a fandom so quick to recall plot points in a storyline, either to critique or forecast storytelling decisions, this same memory is reduced to that of a goldfish when confronted with a new version of a constantly recurring story when it takes place in reality.
This project is my attempt at a different approach; to look back at major events of the industry in an effort to find the patterns and understand the root cause(s) that always lead back to the same arguments. What can be found when we stop treating these incidents as though they take place in a vacuum?