Wrestling Tribalism Is The Worst Its Ever Been

What's good y'all? It's your boy Ross back at again with another video. So, we're going to check out a video from the homie 20 minute promo. Wrestling tribalism doesn't make any sense to me. And I'm glad that he actually uh made a video talking about this because the fact that it's such a prevalent thing on social media, it's just the dumbest thing to me. I can literally talk positive about AEW. In fact, I recently did. I actually made a video talking about Allin and uh the new levels debuted and me enjoying the matches that I did see. I enjoyed Kenny versus Will Osprey. I enjoyed uh Mercedes versus Willow. And for all the things that I did enjoy, I can make that video cool. But soon as they're a video criticizing AEW, all of a sudden out out the woodwork, AEW stands come at me like, "Oh, look at this WWE paid chill." What? When I literally just made a video talking about what I enjoyed, like I'm confused. And then if I give criticism to WWE, then a WWE stand comes out of nowhere. I mean, they're still better than AEW and all this other stuff. I'm like, I I didn't even talk about AW. What are we doing? Like, it's really weird. And it's actually kind of dumb. If you're one of those people, cuz I'm sure there's somebody that follows me, quote unquote, supports me, that does this type of [ __ ] stop, bro. You know, these wrestlers are cool with each other in real life. Most of them are. Why the [ __ ] are you batting for a company? so much that you [ __ ] on anybody else enjoyment of their favorite company. It's stupid. Stop it. Geez. Y'all been doing this for years and it's it's cringe. Enjoy wrestling. No matter [clears throat] where it's from. I literally made a post not too long ago about all the wrestling that was happening all at one time. I think it was right around the time for Allin. Uh, Triple A had a show. Uh, AW had a show and NXT had a show. And I was like, us wrestling fans, we won today. And of course is some weird dork. Shut the [ __ ] up, bro. What? What? Can't make this up, bro. Cannot make this up. But shout out to the homie 20-minute promo. I'mma link down this video uh down below in description. And check out his other wrestling videos. He has some great wrestling opinions and takes. I think you guys should definitely go check him out. Show him some love. I check out his videos off camera uh plenty of times and he's a dope dope creator, wrestling creator in the space. So, go show him some love. Nevertheless, let's check this out, bro. Cuz I'm willing to bet we probably have some similar sentiments. Wrestling is a very strange thing to me. I've never quite fully grasped it from the very beginning when I started watching wrestling I 18 years ago to now like I just I've never understood it. I've always just been somebody in general that just loved pro wrestling, loved watching it, loved immersing myself in it, but was always limited with time. And WWE was always the easiest for me to consume. It was the first wrestling that I got into. So that was always kind of the first love in that way. And that's kind of where I have the most knowledge. But even like I remember when I started watching TNA in in 2011 and I was at that point I was starting to get involved in like the wrestling group chats and the wrestling forum stuff and god I remember even back then the gatekeeping nature the tribalism just getting and I was pretty young at the time but just getting roasted by these random grown men because I was new and I was a WWE fan and because I wasn't there for you know the the the mid 2000s the late 2000s, the prime AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, Kurt Angle, Sting, Christian Cage, >> Jeff Jarrett, maybe all that stuff. I was late to the party. So, and I and I got that gatekeepy vibe. I didn't care. I still watched. I still enjoyed. And with TNA's product, I was a fan for many years. I kind of stopped watching in the mid to late 2010s when it started to get a little weird. And ever every year was like, is TNA going under? And around that time is where I found Lucha Underground. So, I kind of replaced my secondary viewing with with that and that kind of became like one of my favorite wrestling shows to watch. But kind of regardless, I just throughout my entire time watching wrestling, I can remember and and there was always a form of tribalism going on in the community if you were in that part of the community. >> And this has been going on for a long time, even with WCW and uh WWF at the time. I mean, if you was just kind of on forums and stuff, you can see the tribalism. This has always been a thing. It's always been a thing, but it's gotten so much worse because a lot of people are on social media. It's gotten to the point where if you say anything positive, show any type of positivity to one company over the other, someone's going to get offended and feel some type of way. You know, a lot of times the comparisons is it's a a mute point because they're different companies and they operate differently and they provide a different style of wrestling. You can watch either one and enjoy either one, but instead it's always going to be some weird old dork that sits up there and and talks about how this company's so much better and WWE is this or WWE is so much better and AEW's this and it just be like, what are we doing, bro? Can can we can we talk about the show that we just watched? Can we enjoy the show that we just, you know, digested that, you know, that may have entertained us? Like, can we do that? No. Okay. All right. We just got to keep going at each other on X cuz [ __ ] morons. >> If you weren't if you were a casual fan, if you weren't ingrained in social media or the forums or or even like the chat boxes that used to be by the by the streams of of RAW cuz I didn't have the the channel to watch it back in the day. So, I had to watch one of those streaming sites when I was a kid. And thankfully I eventually our poor asses were able to get the channel so I can actually watch it on TV in HD instead of 240p with a very vulgar chat in the corner. But it was always the same thing that and it's it's so funny because now it it feels like it's worse than ever with Twitter and social media and just because it's so much more easy for everybody to have a voice and everybody to say how they feel and everybody to give their opinion. But wrestling fans have always been the same way. Even if you watch that Dark Side of the Ring on Samoa Joe and the Necro Butcher, you kind of see that highlighted in that episode. How you have those kind of two different types of fandoms that were like super protective. Like you have the Ro fan base and then you have like the death match fan base that like look down on each other. It's just that's just kind of how wrestling is. It's very clicky. It's like people have their thing and that's like their community and they're very protective of it. You know, there's people like me that just view wrestling as this one big entity of all these different ways to express storytelling. Like, yeah, you have the WWE, more safe, more TV, more polished style. Then you have the more indie style, which is more focused on the athleticism, the the moves, the expression of the art. You have the death match style, which is like using your body a as a as a way to paint your picture, paint your canvas, using violence, that ultra violence as a way to tell your stories. You know, Lucha Libre, there's so many different styles of wrestling, so many different even like the comedy wrestling. You hear Brian Danielson talk about like the Bucklands that he used to do. Like there's so much variety. And that's what I love about pro wrestling is you have >> and the thing is you don't even have to like all the different styles. You don't if I don't me personally I'm not the biggest fan of death wrestling. I like some of the aspects of it being told in certain stories but you know over a while it just becomes like you become numb to it and that's personally me. I'm not the biggest fan. I can much respect to those out there that's destroying their bodies for a ham and cheese sandwich. You got it. But I'm not going to sit up there and just harp on it if I don't like it or I'm not the biggest fan of it. You know what I do? I just don't watch it. I'm not gonna get mad at someone because they like it. Hey, if you like it, cool. But I'm not about to do that. And that's the problem. If a fan likes a certain style, a fan of another certain style is going to feel like you shouldn't like that style or you're lame for liking that style. You're not watching the real stuff, buddy. It's all wrestling. Who gives a [ __ ] bro? Like what you like. Enjoy what you enjoy. Go from there. If you don't enjoy it, don't watch it. So many of y'all try to come out here and discredit someone else's enjoyment. It's not your enjoyment. If they like it, let them like it. Who gives a damn if you don't like it? Like, what are we doing? >> So much of it, so many ways. It's like movies, you know, having all these different genres and different styles of of of storytelling. And I love that. But for a lot of people, they have theirs that they like. >> Mhm. >> They don't really care about all the other noise. And that's fine. Like you can have preferences. If say you just prefer one style and that's your thing, that's what you enjoy. You can't really get into the other stuff. >> It's that's great, but it's when you start to look down on others because their preferences don't match your preferences. literally you get this kind of elitist mentality of I'm better than you because I'm a fan of this that I perceive as better. It's very entitled, but I get it when you're in that. You don't see it that way. But it absolutely comes across to anybody else from the outside in as just entitled. And that's why the whole tribalism thing is so annoying for people because it's like you don't understand how irritating you're being until you go on the outside looking in. can look at yourself from like a from like a third person perspective and be like, "Oh [ __ ] I'm really that [ __ ] annoying." Hey, and I get it. A lot of it's for engagement. A lot of it on social media is for engagement. I just saw this one Twitter account. I'm not going to say his name, but giving credit to AEW, somebody who usually doesn't, but has to throw in Tony Khan spelled C. Trying to throw in that jab that he knows is >> Yep. And I I see that all the time, too. Like, why are we giving backhanded compliments to a a show? What's the point? What are you doing off that? And a lot of it is engagement bait. I you know, y'all know the certain accounts that literally pro WWE, pro AEW, but they'll talk about the other show. Y'all know the accounts on X. You don't even have to name them. Y'all know the accounts on X. That's literally how they get paid is to troll and to get engagement on [ __ ] on the other product. And so many people that don't even realize it, they fall for the engagement. B. I'm one of the people that's falling for it. Then I realize I know what they're doing. Cuz if you want to be honest, I'm willing to bet those people that run those accounts, they watch both of them. They to an certain extent, they watch the other company just to [ __ ] on it. doesn't matter what how good it is or how bad it is just to get the engagement. And that's also that spurs on the tribalism because people get caught up into, you know, this company versus this company to the point where they buy into the [ __ ] They buy into it because they they want to feel a part of something. It's once again, it's all dumb. It's all stupid. Like what you like, but you know, it's like talking to a [ __ ] brick wall. is going to farm engagement that he knows is going to get people talking, that he knows is going to get the comments, the engagement, even though Twitter doesn't even pay for engagement anymore. And that's just the way it works. That's the way Twitter works. It's going to take a while to recondition people that now you actually have to be original and interesting and actually provide substance if you want to make a profit off of that platform. You can't just spew nonsense and rage bait and engagement bait and put no value out into the platform. And I think that's the best for everybody because how sick I'm so sick of like when you go in comment sections of of posts and it's just somebody posting reposting all their stuff because they're trying to farm engagement or every reply is just unrelated to the original post cuz they're trying to use that attention to get impressions on their own stuff. It was just a very toxic environment. I'm glad they've kind of nuked that and we can reset a little bit and and maybe things can be maybe slightly more organic. Probably not, but maybe that would be nice. But that's what a lot of it is. It's rage bait. It's engagement bait. It's it's not real. It's not genuine. It's not how people genuinely feel. If you actually were able to get in a room with a lot of these people that you see posting on Twitter, all these insanely rage batty, engagement batty things. A lot of them are going to be normal people that maybe got sucked into that internet world and are kind of putting on a character playing a face on that because it gives them some sort of enjoyment of dopamine, whatever. I don't I'm not going to play psychologist. But these are the people you interact with in your day-to-day life that you don't have an issue with, that you think are normal people, that are good people, that you wouldn't expect to go online and attempt to farm rage out of people. Mhm. >> But that's just kind of the world we live in. And when you take the tribalism that's always existed in wrestling and then you add it to this internet culture that's really just ramped up to 11 over these past several years, you get something that feels so much more amplified, but it's always existed. I've always felt it. >> It's always been a thing. Wrestling has always been super clicky. Wrestling has always been really gatekept by certain communities of people. And maybe that's part of the reason wrestling, at least that certain non- mainstream style, has always kind of capped off at a certain level because I'm not going to lie, like it's it's not exactly super welcoming for people a lot of the time, especially when they try to dive in on the social media stuff and they try to learn and immerse themselves in new content, new wrestling. It's not very welcoming. It's very toxic, very clicky. People get [ __ ] on for not knowing things, for not knowing the lore of things. Like, how do you, >> bro? So many people have this wrestling historian knowledge that if you didn't know a certain person wrestled at the Tokyo Dome back in 95 or some obscure year, guess what? You're not a true wrestling fan. Or if you didn't know this match happened at a house show and it wasn't televised, but you had to know this happened. You're not a true wrestling fan. I'm sure y'all ran into those wrestling purists. Oh, well actually you didn't know that. You're just You got to be new. Shut up. And if I am new, I didn't know. Shut up. Ah, [laughter] you expect people to know the lore of a wrestler or a move or a story without asking questions. It's hard for new people to plug themselves in. Imagine, picture where you were when you first started watching wrestling. You were a little clueless. It took you a while to immerse yourself into that world to to figure out uh the characters, the nuances, the stories, you know, what whose moves were what, what was a finishing move, what what it it takes a little bit of time to get in there. I just find that a lot of subsections of the pro wrestling space are not very welcoming to new fans. The tribalism, all that is a big part of it. And I think wrestling companies also do a bit to feed into it, especially between WWE and AEW. It's just it's very >> WWE in particular. Every time AEW has a show, they're trying to run directly against it. They're really creating this us versus them narrative when it's not. It's just two different wrestling shows that offer something different. And it's great to have like we want AEW to succeed and we want WWE to have good television. We want both to be at the top of their games. And we want all the wrestlers who are who are working for these companies to be paid well, to be to feel creatively satisfied, to enjoy coming to work and to be able to put on the best product. Not only for them because they're artists and they want to put out the best work, but for us as fans who watch the show every week, who want to be entertained and want to get the experience and want to feel like we're getting the best possible product. So, it's not us versus them. It's it's synergy. We all collectively want the same thing. We want the wrestling business to be successful. We want the wrestlers to be successful. We want the fans to enjoy the wrestling product and want to be able to attend shows and go to shows and be a part of that ecosystem and be proud to call yourself a wrestling fan cuz I grew up in a time where you you had to kind of keep that [ __ ] close to the vest. I had my core group that knew and nobody else knew. took me a very long time before I actually started just like telling people that I was a wrestling fan. Like literally I was an adult. I didn't even tell my wife when I first met her. It took some time. Like it just not that I was embarrassed by it at that time. But it's just that one of those things like mentally you just kind of like it's when I grew up particularly just it's just you just think you keep that to yourself. But eventually I'm like why am I keeping this to myself? For one I'm proud of being a wrestling fan. I'm proud of what I watch. I'm proud of the product. And regardless if the shows are good, bad, if there's if there's rough periods creatively in WWE or a whatever, I'm still proud to call myself a wrestling fan. I'm still proud to say that I watch the work and the art form and the product that the wrestlers that the writers that everybody who's involved in that process puts on. I am proud to be a fan of that. And as I've gotten older now, I'm I'm I'm inching towards 30 here. I know [ __ ] No, I'm proud of this. I'm proud of being a fan. I'm proud of of being a wrestling fan. I'm proud to say I'm an AEW fan. I'm proud to say I'm a WWE fan. I'm proud to say I'm a TNA fan. I'm proud to say I'm a wrestling fan. I love watching it. And I have a beautiful opportunity that I've been given with this platform that I've only been doing for over just over eight months now where I get to talk about wrestling and make a living from it. Wrestling is my other than my wife, [laughter] my first love. And I'm not built for this [ __ ] So, I'm not going to get in a ring and do it, but I can talk about it. And I could be one of the people who instead of, you know, preaching all the negativity, which does get clicks and views, and I get that. I try not to. Instead, I want to talk about the positives. And even the negatives, I want to try and spin them in a positive way. I want to tell stories about wrestling that I grew up with that I love. You know, I want to put something positive out into the wrestling space in a world that's so filled with tribalism and negativity and toxicity and and egos and rage bait and engagement bait and just selfish desire to accumulate as much views as possible by any means necessary. Make your bread, make your money how you do. I don't what I don't care. But I don't want to be that. I know this video here because it's not a negative video per se. It's not a view performing video. I don't care. This is something I wanted to talk about. This is something I want to talk about because I watched uh Denise El Saledo posted a video couple days ago about why she still covers AEW, why she never stopped. And I I really enjoyed that video. It just a simple video of her talking about growing being a fan and and growing up and the tribalism and all that. And that kind of sparked my desire to make my own video just about that whole thing and how I feel and just and just be raw about it. And thank you Denise for posting that. That was a very great video. And I and I thank you for sharing your story as a fan. I've seen lots of creators post kind of their opinions and and talk about this sort of thing. I just wanted to give my two cents and regardless if you're an AW fan, WWE fan, whatever fan, just know you're on this channel, you're subscribed, you are welcome here, you know, and and I know people have said like, "Post more AW, why don't you post AW?" It wasn't that I didn't want to. It was because I was posting specifically because I found kind of what seemed like an underserved fan base of the the stuff that happened in that mid to late 2000s range, that ruthless aggression period. I felt that a lot of fans who grew up during that time were underserved on this platform. So, I wanted to provide videos and content and will continue to uh of that era as well as the current era, past whatever. But, you know, AEW didn't exist in that 2003 to 2009 range. So, I just I wasn't focused on that era, per se. But lately, I'm so like I'm I'm I'm at a point now where I just want to talk about everything. That's kind of what I've been doing. I've been talking about everything. I just want to be immersed in the world of pro wrestling. This is kind of a rambly video, but it's just it's honestly me just being real with y'all, keeping it 100. And thank you for taking the time to watch this. I have a couple videos cooking right now. There was >> Hey, this is this is definitely tough, bro. >> One you guys suggested in the comments recently that I filmed. It's >> This is actually tough, bro. I'm going to go ahead and give this a like. Y'all go show some love. Now, I'm going show his channel. Y'all go show some love to the 20inut promo, man. He's a dope content creator in the space wrestling content creator and I think you guys will enjoy his other videos. Uh he definitely does some breakdowns from yesterday year from shows from back in the day and obviously what's happening currently and go show him some love. We need more content creators that are like this that have no problem coming out and saying, "Hey, I like I like AW. I like WWE. I like all these other different uh shows and and and companies." And I'm okay with that. That's just me. I like wrestling, professional wrestling, not ones that pick and choose because we know what gets views. We know what's going to get the clicks and the impressions, but at the same time, there needs to be individuals like 20-minute promo that actually wants to just talk about their love for professional wrestling, no matter what company it is. And I'm not saying you got to like all of it. You don't. If you like WWE more than everybody else, cool. You like AW more than everybody else, cool. You like TNA more than everybody else, cool. Doesn't matter. You like New Japan more than everybody else, cool. If you like a couple companies, but not all of them, cool. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem becomes when you try to act like you're better than someone because they like a company you don't care for. That's stupid. That's lame. These companies are not paying you. You're actively paying them essentially with your viewership and your support. They're not paying you to sit up there try to chastise someone that you don't know, but because they gave an opinion of their show that they like now, oh now I got to tell them how wrong they are. No, just enjoy what you enjoy. Simple as that. Enjoy what you enjoy and go from there. And let people enjoy what they enjoy as well. Like you'll never catch me over here sitting up here trying to [ __ ] on AW or [ __ ] on any other company cuz I don't care that much. If I like something, I'll check it out. Simple as that. But hey, comment down below. Let me know some other wrestling related videos y'all want me to check out. I definitely will. I appreciate all love support you guys have shown on channel road to 200k. Appreciate y'all kicking in me. See you on the next one. Peace.