The "good" Hogan threads are almost always about his work. The bad Hogan threads are either about his work or his personality or both. I have yet to see a good Hogan thread about his personality.
There is a problem with this, I'm not sure how many people here actually know Terry Bollea.
There are other problems too. I've pointed out many times the consistency in the double standard that you follow a Hogan book/DVD/magazine/interview to find "obvious lies" but then you go and follow a Bret Hart book/DVD/magazine/interview to find "confirmations and truth".
Most of the Hogan hate stems from a bigger issue, from what I can tell. It's an issue that has it's roots in WCW 1999 or 2000.
Wrestling fans want something that they can follow, they key word here is "follow". It's not that they want to "suspend disbelief. That was never true, yes you can have things that aren't real be portrayed and still have the fans believe it, but, more than that, you always have things that go on that are real that fans will refuse to believe is real, based off of jealousy. For example, how mad would the fans be if someone dumped a bag full of thumbtacks and broken glass all over the ring, and john Cena got powerbombed on it 5 times untill he was a bloody mess, but then Cena got up and just no-sold the pain like nothing? Yeah they'd cry that it's "unrealistic", but that's not accurate, because it's real, right?
Or, how about if Undertaker shot kane with lightning, and kane got beat, but then a month later, Undertaker shoots Kane with lightning 3 times, and Kane kicks out, the fans would cry saying that it's "unrealistic". But, If Kane had gotten shot with the lightning and spent a month in the hospital in kayfabe, the fans would say that this is realistic, even though people can't shoot lightning. Why is that?
It has nothing to do with "suspending disbelief" or "trying to believe" or anything like that. It's about logic, that's what the fans want. They want conclusions that are drawn from premises that follow. No matter WHAT the conclusions are, realistic or not, as long as one thing leads to another. They want a story, that want something to follow.
So, somewhere down the line in the wrestling business, wrestlers forgot how to use logic, they forgot how to use art to draw conclusions that are from premises that follow, and instead, they draw conclusions for premises that don't follow, and so now, there is nothing to follow, so you're just sitting back waiting for the next conclusion, not having any idea what it's going to be.
If you go this route, then sooner or later, in order to not bore the fans to death, you're going to have to have bigger and bigger conclusions, because the fans are just waiting for them because there' nothing to follow, and pretty soon, you have to have some pretty outlandish conclusions.
This is where some of the "shock value" storylines came from. It was a natural progression when you have no way of being able to draw conclusions from premises that follow, you have to naturally work your way up to super massive conclusions, and keep throwing them at the fans one by one, and they have to be bigger and bigger every time.
But, in WCW, they were able to find something for the fans to follow, in a world where both WWE and WCW lost the ability to draw conclusions from premises that follow and could capture you by having you follow something, but instead had to revert to shock conclusions, WCW managed to find a way where they can have the fans follow something. That is what I call "real life-ism".
The Attitude era was the shock conclusion era. Not just profanity and nudity and sexual acts and hardcore wrestling, but they did have some child friendly shock conclusions too, like hot-shotting the title, and swerves and twists and turns, and constant run-in's and constant interference in promo's, and constant surprise beat-downs.
But......
DURING the attitude era, a seed was planted. A seed that would grow huge and would literally define the next era. A seed that would not define the attitude era, because it was too small then, but it was a seed that allowed fans to finally be able to follow something again, and be able to wait for colcusions that would be drawn up bu premises that follow.
That seed was planted in WCW, and I think it was Vince Russo's idea. That seed that would later grow into a huge tree that was planted in WCW in 1999-2000, and would allow the fans to have something to follow (which is what they've always been after all along) is the seed called "real life-ism".
See, because of the standards of physics, you must be able to go about your daily lives in some kind of a step by step fashion, no matter how small, or else you'd be dead. We live in a logical universe. So, when you expose a little bit of real life to people, you will eventually get some conclusions that are drawn up by premises.
In WCW, they didn't know how to form conclusions from premises that follow, but, the fans were able to have something to follow again when they started using real life situations in storylines. This changed the entire business, because now the fans were craving real life. Why? Because you can follow real life, that's what wrestling fans have wanted anyway from day one, to follow something to a conclusion as entertainment.
WCW started such real life classics as
-"let the old guy pass the torch to the younger guy" and
-"push the guy with the workrate" and
-"listen to the internet fans who know the real truth"
-"showmanship is lazy, it's the easy way out"
-"Sports Entertainment is different than wrestling"
-"Backstage politics is ruining lives"
-"taking bumps shows your dedication"
-"have a good match, not a good show"
These are the top 8 storylines of real life-ism, and it was a small seed in WCW and it is a massive tree today. Today we are living in the era of real life-ism. The wrestling fans have found something they have been craving for years, that's to follow something, and now that they've found something, they hold onto it untill it grows massively because wrestling organizations can't find a way to have you follow anything else.
So with that said, wrestling fans today care much more about what is going on in the real life of the wrestlers than they do the characters themselves. In order to be successful today, you have to have atleast something about the main aspect of your character that is real. Hell, even the wrestlers themselves can't do a good job unless they are just being themselves but with the volume turned way up. Now I understand that wrestlers are not actors and you need to have your real self as a part of the charactor, but that's more 60%-40%, not the 85%-15% that it is today. Right now, if the fans saw that Chief Jay Strongbow was Italian, they'd be mad, even though the business isn't meant to be 100% real. So the culture of pro wrestling today is that we are in the real life-ism era. It was a seed planted in WCW in 1999-2000.
Now let me share something important with you: The best way to decieve someone is not to lie to them. No, they could just take the lie and be deceived or they could ignore it and remain true, 50:50. What you have to do to poison a rat is give them 99% good food and mix some poison in with the food. likewise, if you want to deceive people, you have to mix some lies in with the truth. That way, they can deny the whole thing, which means that deny the lie but they also deny some truth. Or that can accept the whole thing, and they accept a truth but also accept a lie. Or, they could try to look iin-between the lines and accept the truth as a lie and accept a lie as the truth. Or finally, they could look in between the lines and accept the truth as truth and accept the lie as lies. That's 75:25.
Here's the thing. The seed that was planted way back in WCW about 11 years ago, that seed had some poison mixed in with it. If you are not very careful at looking in between the lines, you can be deceived, and I regret to say, that alot of people are.
The biggest poison in the seed of real life-ism are the many variations of "good worker = good person" types of philosophies. They stem from those 8 types or so of top storylines I listed above that are related to real life-ism.
The main beliefs are the following:
-Old guys who pass the torch are good people
-good workrate is indicating of a good person
-People who please the internet care more about the business and are good people
-Spending less time on showmanship means you're working harder and a good person
-Non sports entertainment people are more traditional and so are better people
-People who stay away from politics are good people
-People who take bumps give more blood,sweat,and tears and are good people
-People who have a good match at any time on the show care more and are good people
Those types of things are in the backbone of pro wrestling today. It isn't an "internet" thing, it only found it's way onto the internet because that's what people are thinking. I say that this is the backbone of wrestling today because, although I realize there are younger fans who don't think this way, this is the type of thing that the wrestling business operates off of, because they know that all fans, both young and small, care more about the real life of the wrestler than the character. So they incorporate the guy's real life backround, they make sure they hire guys with a solid real life backround, they won't make anything up that much, and they won't even come up with creative single or tag team names. So you have the older fans who started thinking this way from WCW, then you have the middle fans who think this way only because that's the culture that is set now, and you have the younger fans who don't think this way but are told that this is the way it is because of the current culture that has already been set.
Now lets "depoison" the seed, shall we. The seed with 99% good food mixed with 1% poison looks like this:
-There are old guys who won't pass the torch. This is bad and insecure.
-There are people who don't have good workrate. This is bad and lazy.
-There are people who don't care about the internet. This is bad and lazy.
-There are people who spend their time on showmanship. This is bad and lazy.
-There are people who are Sports Entertainers. This is bad and is the easy way out.
-There are people who play politics. This is bad and is manipulative.
-There are people who try not to take alot of bumps.This is bad and lazy.
-There are people who try to have a mediocre match at certain points on the card. This is bad.
Now, this is what the truth looks like:
-There are old guys who won't pass the torch. This is neither good or bad
-There are people who don't have good workrate. This is neither good or bad
-There are people who don't care about the internet. This is neither good or bad
-There are people who spend their time on showmanship. This is neither good or bad
-There are people who are Sports Entertainers. This is neither good or bad
-There are people who play politics. This is neither good or bad
-There are people who try not to take alot of bumps. This is neither good or bad
-There are people who try to have a mediocre match at certain points on the card. This is
neither good or bad.
Now, because we live in the real life-ism era, which is based off of the inability to captivate people by drawing conclusions from premises that follow, fans crave whatever they know is real. However, fans only know what's real based off of what is allowed for them to know. So if they are told that ABC and D are real, the fans in a real life-ism era will now continually crave ABC and D, even if D is fake. There is a paradigm in place. A paradigm with mostly truth but some poison and lies mixed in, and the fans crave the whole paradigm altogether, even the poison part, because the paradigm has something to follow.
The Hogan hate stems from this paradigm. Hogan is a victim of the "good worker = good person" philosophy. Now, there may be times that people will completely deny that they think this way, that they don't like Hogan because of other objective reason. But, have you thought about why it is that you take the info a certain way to be used as support and then take the same type of info at another time and use that as non support?
It's because you would have to start off with a certain presupposition in the 1st place, but that presupposition itself is based off of the paradigm.
For example:
-"Hogan lied about Andre's weight at WM3". This is a bad thing why? Has WWE ever lied about Andre's weight? Andre didn't weigh 650 lbs, that's a lie by Hogan. Andre weighed 550 lbs in reality, because WWE said so.
But, Even IF WWE told the truth about Andre's weight and Hogan lied about Andre's weight, Why is Hogan lying a bad thing and WWE telling the truth about it a good thing? It couldn't be because WWE's story is closer to reality is it? That would be if the fan's mind is reality based. I wonder why that would be. If WWE is supposed to be entertainment, couldn't you interpret Hogan claiming Andre weighed 800 lbs as trying to make Andre look better? The mindset of the fans is that real is good and storyline is bad.
This gives way for the "good worker = good person" philosophy that everyone will try to deny. But it is actually so bad that people would be hugely surprised to find out that RVD and Hulk Hogan are really good friends in real life. Because RVD is supposed to play the role of the young up and comer who doesn't have a shot but "works his ass off" and Hogan is supposed to play the role of the paranoid lazy person afraid to lose his spot to people like RVD and thus would "hold him down". These are the real life-ism storylines that people are addicted to, and thus, would be surprised that the two have been really good friends for many years.
The Hogan hate comes from the paradigm of the wrestling business today.