Forbes.com discuss the contradiction of WWE
Feb 1, 2015 13:23:27 GMT -5
ritt works hard fo da chickens likes this
Post by carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army) on Feb 1, 2015 13:23:27 GMT -5
Well.... there's a couple of things packaged in here, I think. Making up masses of people who agree with you to feel like your opinion is more true or valid ("EVERYONE thinks Reign sucks!!") is bad. But making up masses of people who DISAGREE with you to feel like you're thinking for yourself ("EVERYONE thinks Reigns sucks!") is no better. The fact that you want to "challenge accepted notions" seems to imply that you think it's necessary; it wouldn't occur to most people around here to think anything else. I don't know if that's how you mean it, but it's important to remember that groups of people can just agree: it isn't necessarily groupthink.
One thing about the Forbes article I think is related to what you said: they aren't necessarily comparing wrestling to wrestling. Raw ain't Breaking Bad, and we all know it. In one way, it's a "subjective opinion" that Raw's writing sucks, but if we dug into things like dramatic rise and fall, character consistency, giving characters clear motivations, etc., you're on more solid ground. "Good writing" being subjective doesn't mean we all have to just throw our hands up in the air and that's the end of that.
I'm also quite obviously not making up loads of people that think Reigns sucks, am I? A cursory glance over the front page would tell you that I'm on the money there.
If someone really wants to get into actual writing techniques than yeah, that would be more solid ground. But no-one ever does. I'd be pretty confident that if you take the majority opinion of this forum at given times throughout the last decade, Raw will have always sucked. I'm just challenging this idea that the content has been bad for the last 8 months, because 8 months ago I heard that 2013 was full of Authority promos and a Big Show push that no-one wanted, and it sucked. I haven't done a statistical analysis on it, but if I did, the majority opinion on here would be that Raw always sucks, that the content is always bad, and I'm simply saying that it's a ridiculous notion that a company's flagship TV programme is always so bad.
I know you think there's groupthink, but there's two things about that I'm trying to point out. That's not necessarily true, and you don't seem to have any reason for believing it other than "I have the feeling that most people here agree about something and don't have great reasons for it." Both of the pieces of that are just a feeling, informed strongly by your own position as someone who disagrees. It's easy to be "pretty confident" about "majority opinion." Your confidence isn't alone compelling.
The other thing is: That whole mission of coming in and informing everybody about how groupthinky they've been is inherently condescending, especially with you portraying yourself as a lone voice of reason. I can't imagine it being helpful in the way you mean it.
And yes: Raw's writing is terrible. They don't know how to pay off a story, so everything just peters out. Their characters make no sense and it isn't clear what most of their motivations are. Things will stop and start so abruptly, there's never any rhythm or sense of tension.
I would be shocked if anyone can point at, say, the recent firing storyline and say it's good writing. No stakes, because everything that happens just gets reversed like two weeks later. No payoff to Ziggler's booking as the hero. No emotional growth from Cena getting his friends fired and then rehired. The whole thing's pointless, because it was building to the Rumble and none of them won, and now apparently they're all just moving on to other things.
I mean, you can say that it doesn't MATTER that it's bad writing, and I'd disagree with that, but at least I wouldn't stare at you open-mouthed, like I would it you said it was good. But TV writing has some pretty high standards these days, and Raw is down where with Glee at the bottom.