by Jeb Tennyson Lund
OnlineOnslaught.com/CitizenScholar.net

When Brock Lesnar and Bill Goldberg faced off at WrestleMania, no one with a normal ability to hear could have construed it as a straightforward wonderful moment. The funny thing about it, though, is that it was a wonderful moment. Tens of thousands of people basically said, "Say what you will about 'Greatest Show on Earth' all you want, WWE, you're not snowing me on this." There are few things more delightful than hearing people shut their ears to the hard-sell and instead decide that they will determine whether they got their money's worth.

Of itself, that sentiment is not terribly revolutionary. The great thing about wrestling fans is that they are and always have been honest people. When something is no good, they say so. X-Pac knows this bitterly and too well. But that WrestleMania moment — one that we will never see on a video package — may well have been the moment when the defining majority of fans could no longer be described as uninformed or "marks." Perhaps months or even two or three years ago, the "smart" fan became the norm, and that was the moment it passed from theory to plausible phenomenon. So many people knew what was happening and how to react to it that their behavior can no longer be viewed as mere accident.


A Conversation with the DirecTV Guy
I was more than a little surprised when my attempts to order WrestleMania turned into a pleasant lesson on how casual wrestling fans access knowledge about their favorite quasi-sport. Here I thought I'd be stuck in Voice-Jail, punching random numbers and getting trapped in different audio menus. Instead, I got to chat with a funny wrestling fan.

At the end of last year, the lovely bride and I bought a house, and I took the opportunity to ditch cable service. We only have one cable provider in town, and the cost of digital cable is about thirty dollars more than the cost of DirecTV. I decided to make the switch. My only problem this last weekend was that I'd never bought a pay-per-view via satellite before, and apparently you need a phone line connected to a DirecTV box to be able to order with the remote. At least, I think you do, and I'm stupid.

Not that I cared, because I always call the people and purchase over the phone anyway. A fateful and embarrassing incident some years ago, involving me using the remote and accidentally ordering something off the Spice Channel, in front of my dad — instead of Donnie Brasco — has led me to use the phone ever since.

So I get a hold of one of the DirecTV people and ask my dumb questions.
1. Can I order a pay-per-view through you? Are you the right guy to ask? (Yes and yes.)
2. Does the pay-per-view show up on both TVs, or is the order valid for only one of the satellite boxes? (Yes and no.)

I'm happy, and everything's working out. The DirecTV guy asks me what I'm ordering. I tell him, "WrestleMania." That's when the odd lesson begins.

(Note: Since I was sitting by my computer, I took notes as fast as I could. Naturally, this conversation isn't verbatim. But I can touch-type very fast, have a good memory and remember my journalism training for being specific and attuned to key phrases. As such, I consider the following authentic and faithful, if not flawless.)

DirecTV Guy: WrestleMania, huh? Dude, are you excited?
Me: Yeah. It's 'Mania.
DirecTV Guy: How about Brock/Goldberg? You think Brock's gonna kick his ass?

This is pretty fun. I've never had a cable/satellite employee ask me questions or comment about what I'm ordering. (And, if I ever choose to order something on the Spice Channel in the future, I sincerely hope they ask me nothing and find the ability to stifle critiques on the "film" in question.) I'm used to occasionally being asked questions about wrestling, but they are typically on the order of the "Why do you watch it?" question. It's rarely specific. This guy is being specific, though. I notice that he's asking about Brock v. Goldberg, which is supposedly a "mark-appealing" match, so I try not to dork-up my response too much.

Me: Naaah. I don't think Brock wins. Why, d'you think he's winning?
DirecTV Guy: Come on! Brock's bigger. Plus I heard that Goldberg's contract's up after 'Mania.

Hel-lo.

Me: Yeah? Where'd you hear that?
DirecTV Guy: Read it online last year. Goldberg only signed for one year, so his contract's gotta be up, 'cause he showed up last year around 'Mania time. They gotta have Brock kick his ass outta the WWE.
Me: What if I told you Brock's quitting wrestling right after 'Mania too?
DirecTV Guy: You're making that up! Really?
Me: No, seriously. He's burned out and wants to try to play for the NFL.
DirecTV Guy: Really?
Me: Yeah.
(long pause)
DirecTV Guy: That's crazy. How old is he?
Me: I think he's like 26.
DirecTV Guy: Man, that's old. Who's he gonna play for?
Me: Don't know. No one signed him. He just wants to try out for a team.
DirecTV Guy: Man, that's f—. (pause) Do you mind if I swear?
Me: Nah. Go nuts.
DirecTV Guy: That's fucking re-tar-ded. He's like #1 in wrestling. He's like the next Hogan. Who the hell would quit that job? I want that job.
Me: I know. I know. The guy has enough money for his own jet, and he's bailing because he's tired or something.
DirecTV Guy: What? He bought his own jet? What an asshole.
Me: I know. But you can kinda see where the match is all up in the air now. I mean, who's gonna win? The quitter? Or the other guy who's leaving?
DirecTV Guy: Maaaaaaaaan. Now I kinda want to see the show. I hope Goldberg kicks his ass.
Me: Now you want Goldberg to kick Brock's ass?
DirecTV Guy: Yeah, man. At least Goldberg didn't quit. Man, now I think I really want to see the show.
Me: The match can't be that good. It's a couple of big dudes. I don't know if it's worth it. Don't you get a discount, though? Go ahead and get it if it's free.
DirecTV Guy: No, man. I gotta work.
Me: Order the replay.
DirecTV Guy: Oh, yeah! I could do that.
Me: Hey, you got a few minutes to goof off a bit?
DirecTV Guy: Yeah. Why?
Me: Lemme ask you some wrestling questions.
DirecTV Guy: Why, man? You're the one with the answers.
Me: Look, I write about this stuff. So it's kinda fun to hear what someone who doesn't follow it has to say.
DirecTV Guy: Okay.

Obviously, at this point, I like the guy. I don't like Brock, and neither does he. Plus, he's fun. I'm a pretty consistent champion of public propriety: I hate it when I can hear adults swearing around kids, and I generally don't like people being too familiar. But this guy and I have a little bit of something in common, and he was classy enough to ask me before he started dropping f-bombs and his own opinion all over the place. I wish more people did that. It also doesn't hurt that I think he's funny.

This also gives me an opportunity to learn more about how other people watch wrestling. I know my habits and the clichés that internet wrestling fans fall back on. But this guy might be different. He seems different. For one, he was interested in the more "mark-friendly" match, but he knew about Goldberg's contract. More importantly, he didn't know anything about Brock's behind-the-scenes actions. He's a mix of fan and insider.

Me: So why'd you know about Goldberg's contract?
DirecTV Guy: Why?
Me: Well, you said you read it online. A lot of people don't read that stuff.
DirecTV Guy: Oh, I saw a commercial on TV about him being back, so I checked it out online to see what was going on.
Me: Where?
DirecTV Guy: I dunno. Some wrestling site.
Me: I write for those type of sites, so that's why I'm asking. Do you read that stuff a lot?
DirecTV Guy: Naaah. I just check in every now and again. I used to be into wrestling when they were doing the whole nWo and Austin thing, but then I stopped watching after it started getting boring.
Me: So you don't watch now?
DirecTV Guy: Sometimes. Most of the time I check in every coupla months to see what's going on. If it sounds good, I watch. Maybe I buy one of the shows.
Me: So you're not a hardcore news junkie or anything.
DirecTV Guy: No. I don't care that much.
Me: But you'll still buy the shows?
DirecTV Guy: Yeah. Sometimes. If it looks cool and I've watched some of the TV stuff for a bit before it. I still check to see if they're worth it first.
Me: Whaddaya mean?
DirecTV Guy: Well, like, they only show one or two matches in the commercials. So I'll see what the other matches are, because I don't want to buy the show if there are gonna be a bunch of sucky matches and only a coupla good ones.
Me: Why not? Don't you just want to see the couple of good matches?
DirecTV Guy: No. I want to see a whole good show.
Me: What else do you look for?
DirecTV Guy: Injuries.
Me: You're kidding! You're shitting me! Why?
DirecTV Guy: 'Cause, like, say I see a commercial for The Rock versus, I don't know, somebody, right? It looks like a good match. But if I go online and they say The Rock's injured... you know it's going to suck.
Me: Really? I don't doubt you or anything, I'm just surprised, is all.
DirecTV Guy: Well yeah. If The Rock's got a bad leg, he's just going to stand around and punch, and you're not gonna see any cool stuff with tables or ladders or anything different, you know? He's gonna be hurt, and nothing much'll happen.
Me: Okay, lemme get this straight. Like I said, I write about this stuff, so I'm interested why you read it. You're saying you don't watch every week; you don't buy every show; you don't read about it all the time, but you will read about it if you're thinking about watching one of the pay-per-views?
DirecTV Guy: Yeah.
Me: Why?
DirecTV Guy: 'Cause the pay-per-views are, like, forty bucks.

I probably could have asked him forty more questions, but any more time on the phone would have started to seem weird — to say nothing of potentially getting him in trouble with his supervisor. I thanked him for helping me and humoring me, wished him a good weekend, and told him I hoped he'd enjoy the show if he bought it. I also told him that Guerrero and Benoit's matches would be awesome. He seemed interested and cheerful, and that was that.


The DirecTV Guy as Fan
What surprised me most about my conversation with DirecTV Guy is that I came away from it without being surprised at all. If you think about it, his comments and motives are extremely basic: if he's going to make an investment, he's going to do his best to make sure it's a wise one.

None of this is shocking or out of the ordinary. Granted, we make hopeful purchases all the time. We go to an unfamiliar Burger King and wager that it will be properly managed and thus provide the food promptly, with the proper ingredients and at the proper temperature. Yet we are just as liable to be wrong as we are to be right. We buy albums on the basis of one song on the radio, betting that the single will be indicative of the quality of the rest of the disc.

However, these are small investments. More importantly, they are investments about which we can do very little research. When you visit a new Burger King, you're hungry. You want eat, not do research. Moreover, how effective or accurate would that research be? All you could really do is look at the food and time its delivery. Sure, you could ask individual patrons how satisfied they were with their meals; but you'd either be beaten senseless, stared at uncomfortably or asked to leave by the manager.

With CDs, you're just as ill-equipped. A single is no indication of further content. In some cases, they are misleading. Pink Floyd never had a real hit single until The Wall's "Another Brick in the Wall: Part Two," but Dark Side of the Moon spent longer on the charts than any album in history. And reviews can be equally unhelpful: Rolling Stone panned Led Zeppelin for most of their career. Never mind all those bands that are press darlings yet remain functionally unlistenable.

Nonetheless an album or a fast-food meal is a small and understood risk. Once items reach the forty-dollar mark, though, people tend to become more cautious and less indifferent about their investments. Given the cost of WWE pay-per-views, we should assume that a healthy number of people take a little extra time to make sure that they don't waste their money. A WWE pay-per-view is eight Burger King lunches in one, price-wise. And it's something you can check up on beforehand.

As people grow accustomed to obtaining goods online, they grow equally accustomed to verifying the worth of said goods online. My mother is probably as internet-averse as an intelligent and clever person can be. Though she reads almost nothing online and avoids it for the most part, she managed to work out using Amazon.com on her own. Once she got comfortable buying things through that site, she also became just as comfortable reading about those things before purchase. Now, when curious about a book or a set of history documentaries for one of her classes, she'll scour various review sites, news and magazine sites, customer reviews and general feedback before purchase.

Not to make this a family issue, but if my mother can do it, surely tens of thousands more can and do. Perhaps it was another bit of internet-wrestling misinformation, but I read a statistic stating that over 50% of WrestleMania tickets were purchased online. Is it not reasonable to assume that the people who were intelligent and comfortable enough to buy their tickets online are also smart and curious enough to venture to one wrestling site or another, noodle around and maybe figure out what's going on backstage? Can't we assume that the internet-savvy are also expense-savvy?

Without a doubt, there are hundreds of thousands (if not more) people out there who feel the WWE's TV shows and advertisements fully inform them about upcoming pay-per-views. Yet, if DirecTV Guy is any indication, many people, even casual fans, want to know what they buy. Finding out a little bit more about how their money is spent is neither a challenge, nor uncommon, nor unexpected.


They Found out About the Club
Internet wrestling fans often bemoan the fact that angles and wrestlers are pushed for the sake of placating the "uneducated" or "mark" fan, yet they also seem resistant to the idea that more and more smart/internet fans are probably being created daily. It's as if many want the divide to be maintained, if only to keep them somehow "special." This sentiment is both vanity and hogwash.

For one, wouldn't smart fans want everyone else "smartened" so that match styles and quality would be streamlined? For another, wouldn't it be fun if we were all in the same boat, sharing the same goals, suffering and celebrating as a group — cheering, at home, just as strongly as we would in an arena? Who wouldn't want that?

The rarity of "smart" fans is a myth, one perpetuated most dearly by the smart fans who probably would prefer every fan to be smart and all matches catered to them. Yet somehow this club is always painted as constant, small and exclusive. If only to keep themselves or their enervatingly repetitive arguments "important," they deny the possibility that their identity could be common. Again, this is hogwash.

The fact of the matter is that not all members of a community are vocal members. If the IWC really is an "Internet Wrestling Community," then there are people like me, who write columns, and also people who only read them — just as there are soccer moms and septuagenarians who get completely twitterpated at Town Council meetings, while other homeowners, like me, never attend. Just because someone doesn't undeniably declare their allegiance to a group doesn't mean they aren't a part of it. Not stating an opinion on an issue does not mean you are unaware of it. Absence of participation is not an indication of ignorance.

For instance, let's say that 400 people regularly write wrestling columns for sites that aren't personal web pages. Four-hundred columnists for wrestling news sites. Now let's say that there are five million people who regularly watch wrestling. What's 400 divided by 5,000,000?—"8E-5." That's how low the number is: it's so low that it turns into some weird mathematical notation I forgot a decade ago, when I realized I never needed to take math again. If you know what that notation means, you also know how insignificant it is.

Or how about some more digestible numbers? OnlineOnslaught's message board has some 200 active posters. CRZ's Wienerboard has about 500. And let's stroke 411's cut-and-paste ego and say it has 1,000 active posters — even if most of them talk about God knows what nonsense. That's 1,700 posters. Now let's look at the worst viewer count that one of my columns (one of the first three) ever got: 15,000.

What does that mean? Let's crunch numbers:
• 13,300 more people read the column than post on popular message boards.
• The number of "IWC" members in terms of columnists is .027 of the number of people who read the column.
• The number of "IWC" members in terms of active message-board posters is .11 of the number of people who read the column.

Now I'm not trying to come off like some big shot (I am writing an unpaid column for a wrestling website, so how could I be?), but my number of readers per-column has increased by a lot. Also, the number of active members for those boards is off, as there are certainly crossover posters active on all three at the same time. The number of unique posters is smaller than the one I used. Hence, the percentages I gave are skewed higher than they actually are now.

What this means is that the "smart" IWC community's notion of exclusivity and uniqueness is terribly misgiven, even with my feeble numbers. And, again, being inactive and never using your voice does not exclude you from a community. Just because you read a message board and never join it does not mean you cannot or do not share similar views. My column' view-count tells me that there are a lot more smart fans out there, even if they don't tell me themselves.

And what of DirecTV guy? He educates himself irregularly and on his own time. He's neither a message-board poster nor a frequent source of page views. Worse, my page-view citation is pessimistic and in regard to a mid-traffic site. If Wade Keller, Dave Meltzer and Bob Ryder's claims to page views and traffic are to be believed, then their readership is nearly 1,000 times the number of regular message-board denizens and one-fifth the number of per-show WWE viewers.

In short: the smart club is not small, not exclusive and not the sole possessor of wrestling wisdom. That wisdom is accessible to all. Given the average Canadian, Brit and American's comfort, familiarity and ease with the internet, the club will shrink with each passing month. We smarts are not special. We're certainly not as special as we claim to be. Since we doubt and scoff at WWE's self-centered pronouncements of success and distinction, it would only be too fitting — and too rightly honest — if we were to turn that distrust and scathing evaluation on our own sense of worth.


Goldberg v. Lesnar
Over a year ago, I tried to classify a breed of WWE enthusiast that I named the "Half-Fan." I described someone who enjoyed the product, supported it, wanted to cheer it, but who wanted to be a bit apart from the crowd. Maybe it was someone who didn't identify with the stereotype of "WWE Fanatic." Maybe it was someone who dressed snobbily. Maybe it was someone who preferred to be left alone and wouldn't get involved in discussions about whether wrestling is fake or pointless. Maybe it was someone who hated garish t-shirts with "ASS" written on them big enough to be read at 100 yards. Regardless, I was talking about someone who addressed wrestling on their own terms, with their own interest or patience or particular involvement.

While many "smart" fans loved the column — perhaps because I said I felt uncomfortable living in the south and getting erroneously grouped in the "redneck wrasslin' fan" category — they also have seemed all too ready to create categories of their own. For people who gleefully say they're not simple enough to get duped into stereotyping a wrestler because he's "French" or "Anti-American," they seem awfully happy to stereotype other wrestling fans. And I admit I'm guilty of sometimes being part of that group. We've arrived at a codification of fans that's almost black-and-white in structure: the clever and the duped; those with athletic standards and those drawn by bread and circuses; the analysts and the swayed. We could almost make a brutal post-apocalyptic vertical-society film and call it: Fritz Lang's "Workrate."

Brock v. Goldberg at WrestleMania should give us pause. No claim that everyone in the audience was a "smart" fan and IWC member is plausible. Nor can we claim that those fans weren't just as smart as a "smart" fan. Perhaps some didn't read news sites and instead had the details filled in by someone in an adjoining seat. But now those people know. They know there is a world beyond the shows and the commercials. They cannot forget it, even if they don't join it.

All those watching the show and mystified about the crowd chants were told what they meant by J.R. They now know that others learned something ahead of time that they hadn't heard of. They now know there is another world accessible to them.

Those who heard by word-of-mouth in the stands and those who heard via the television might never opt to read about wrestling's dirty daily secrets. But the basic data of the number of website hits compared to the number of active website posters belies the notion that we smarts are alone, or few. If the numbers of column and recap readers say anything, it's that there are already tens or hundreds of thousands more out there who read what we read and doubt as we doubt — even if they remain mute.

The people in the stands who watched Brock square off against Goldberg were not. They shouted the words that likely rung through our several-hundred "smart" heads. They should tell us that we aren't unique or isolated. If anything, they tell us that there are more of "us" coming.
 

E-MAIL JEB LUND
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Jeb Tennyson Lund is a regular columnist for Citizen Scholar, an online
journal. If you want to read his sadly less wrestling-oriented columns, go
to www.citizenscholar.net.

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