When I first got into the world of wrestling social media, I had low expectations. I was just looking to hopefully connect with other people who watched wrestling because the people around me either thought it was stupid or had stopped watching by 2007. To my surprise and joy, I found a whole community of new friends and fellow fans. I got likes and comments from some of my favorite wrestlers, mostly from my relatively happy and supportive posts. But something I’ve really noticed over the past year or so is the amount of people who make being rude, mean, and negative into their entire platform. And somehow these end up being some of the biggest platforms in the community! Why?
Now to be fair, this isn’t about those people who objectively critique things or point out when things are racist, sexist, or otherwise questionable. This is about the people who dedicate entire podcasts to bashing a wrestler they don’t like or spend an endless amount of time on Twitter calling people dumb.
The problem is that for every one hundred good and positive comments, that one hurtful comment will suck the life out of everything. And people have learned that the best way to get acknowledgement is to be mean. If they insult a wrestler, they might get a response or at least the attention of a lot of people. It’s the same for some of these clickbait dirtsheets. Often they’re filled with lies or things taken way out of context and yet still somehow presented as the truth. And there are those who will cling to these untruths and use them to justify their behavior, adding to the toxicity of social media.
So what if we stop giving those negative people the attention they desperately crave? Instead of engaging with obvious trolls, ignore them for people whose content makes you happy. Again, I fully support jumping on people who are willfully obtuse and problematic. But the garden variety trolls who complain about women getting cosmetic surgery or programming they don’t like (and are in no way forced to watch)? Yeah, they can choke.
We as wrestling fans need to take back our community spaces. We shouldn’t let them be dominated by those who refuse to see even the tiniest amount of good in what they’re watching. And we shouldn’t let them slide with body shaming, insulting, or spreading malicious rumors about performers. At the end of the day, we’re all wrestling fans and we should be spreading joy and positivity in our fandom so that we continue to grow and prosper.
