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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Apr 12, 2024 7:48:15 GMT -5
even though the match quality is pretty strong and nobody knows why that's not drawing a bigger number has just led to some of you guys being so angry. First off just want to say that I also don't agree with the WWE fans aren't real wrestling fans sentiment. I have zero issues with WWE fans or fans of any style and don't think being a fan of a certain style or promotion makes you any less or more of a fan. I'm in total agreement with you on that. As far as the anger....for me it is what seems like a constant barrage AEW fans have to take. I've literally never seen a promotion and fan base get attacked like AEW is now. I consider this board to be the best place on the internet to discuss wrestling because its one of the few places you can have a good conversation about wrestling that won't result in getting trolled. Had I made this thread elsewhere it would have been a much different result. However, on Wednesday night the AEW board was overrun with people trolling and bashing AEW. I have never seen anything like it on this board. Add in the fact that any AEW ratings thread will likely have a few "1" troll votes and it gets exhausting after a while (which I haven't seen happen on the Raw/Smackdown polls to this extent). The poll for Dynamite was troll bombed to a level I didn't think was possible on here. Just speaking for myself but after a while I think people have gotten fed up with the constant attacks which leads to anger. I know I had to edit a post I made towards someone in the locked thread because I just got tired of the trolling and fired back out of anger. I don't think Cornette, Bischoff or any other podcasters have anything to do with the ratings and attendance. I do think they play a HUGE part in the amount of people attacking AEW non stop. I was more approaching it from the perspective of being angry about “Why aren’t more people watching this show that I believe to be objectively better?”, not about the needless trolling. Poll-bombing has been a recurring issue for a long time, for both WWE and AEW shows, and that’s because the OP of those threads takes them very seriously. And because he happens to be one of the more prominent (and, let’s be honest, vocal) posters on this board, a lot of it is probably done moreso to get at him than it is to make a statement about the quality of the show. As a moderator, we can’t really do much about it because, while we can see who votes in them, we can’t see what they voted for, so picking out the trolls would be largely guesswork. And we can’t really go based on people who post regularly versus those who don’t because what if long-time posters who post respectfully partake in the poll-bombing because of the anonymity? Or people who don’t post at all are being genuinely sincere about their score?
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KME
Team Rocket
Posts: 796
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Post by KME on Apr 12, 2024 7:55:06 GMT -5
They definitely seem to be a thing right now, huge increase in similarly worded comments around the time of whatever WWE's current show is, on the same night as Rampage or Collision, on all of AEW's social media content. "Nobody's watching, we're all watching [insert WWE Show or PPV name here]". Didn't think much of it until I saw one that was from hours after WrestleMania had already finished
There's plenty of people who just talk utter shit and are actual people too but there's clearly a fair amount of bots judging by what I've seen and from the opening post.
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Ryushinku
King Koopa
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Post by Ryushinku on Apr 12, 2024 8:16:37 GMT -5
WWE also just had their absolute biggest show of the year.
It's a real hotspot of focus on pro wrestling right now, and with everything, that increases both the emotion and enthusiasm among the genuine fans and non-fans.
And also increases easy bot clickbait and concern troll farming. Come the cold months of post-SummerSlam pre-Rumble, attention drops off.
Never put down to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity. Or, opportunistic laziness.
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cosmo
Samurai Cop
Posts: 2,435
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Post by cosmo on Apr 12, 2024 8:20:22 GMT -5
And I'm also wondering how many of the "this shit is fake and it's sucked since the Attitude Era ended, AEW is better" replies I see on WWE's social media posts are either bots or just tribalistic hipster douchebags.
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mrbananagrabber
King Koopa
Paul Heyman's unofficial joke writer
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Post by mrbananagrabber on Apr 12, 2024 8:21:54 GMT -5
Looks like those clowns in AEW did it again. What a bunch of clowns.
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Post by Jaws the Shark on Apr 12, 2024 8:25:09 GMT -5
I'd frankly be more surprised to find out that wrestling companies weren't astroturfing social media.
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Johnny Flamingo
Hank Scorpio
Killing the business one post at a time
Posts: 6,505
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Post by Johnny Flamingo on Apr 12, 2024 8:27:59 GMT -5
And I'm also wondering how many of the "this shit is fake and it's sucked since the Attitude Era ended, AEW is better" replies I see on WWE's social media posts are either bots or just tribalistic hipster douchebags.
It definitely goes both ways. Anytime AEW or WWE posts something on social media there are some quick replies that make you wonder.
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Magnus the Magnificent
King Koopa
didn't want one.
I could write a book about what you don't know!
Posts: 12,486
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Post by Magnus the Magnificent on Apr 12, 2024 8:29:06 GMT -5
I'm not gonna act like everyone who criticizes AEW is a bot, but wasn't he proven right about this? There are definitely bots on Twitter. The massive surge in bots since Musky took over is objective fact. Though I haven't seen many "S P I C Y A E W H O T T A K E S I N B I O" posts. Yet. "Nuh-uh! There are no bots on Twitter, I mean, X! Call it X, damnit! No bots! Tell it to the Earth!"
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Post by Killah Ray on Apr 12, 2024 8:32:59 GMT -5
AEW is the best wrestling promotion in the world with constantly good wrestling and tv shows so its only natural for people to want to slate it and bash it, the hardcore WWEfans are the worst and every week on WWE tv they seem to take a shot at AEW so as good business WWE seems to be doing, i do feel not many in the industry or true wrestling fans respect them at all as much as AEW and mostly you have think it is bots and the blinded WWE supporters doing the criticising. You seem to talk shit about E fans every chance you get....Jesus Christ get some glasses and learn to read the room...
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Post by SneakMan on Apr 12, 2024 8:43:12 GMT -5
My conversation with an anti-AEW troll on Facebook a week ago:
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Allie Kitsune
Crow T. Robot
Always Feelin' Foxy.
Celestial Princess in Exile.
Posts: 46,149
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Post by Allie Kitsune on Apr 12, 2024 8:49:10 GMT -5
You know how horrible and toxic the WWE board was? At points people mentioning stuff they enjoyed usually got treated with mockery and snark. And a lot of good posters left because of it. It's quite the opposite here where I've seen posters that aren't trolling or "bad faith" posting get dogpiled on because they said something the majority doesn't agree with. You shouldn't let the opposite opinions of others ruin and dictate your enjoyment of a show. A lot of people still trollvote the WWE shows but there's not a peep in there. This is rough waters right now and it too will pass and things will be better Yeah. When WWE was bad we all shit on it, and people who were enjoying the product had to take all the shitting. We shit on WWE, laughed at the falling ratings and attendance. We mentioned people leaving Backlash early, and the disastrous Seth vs Fiend Hell in a Cell match. We did all of that, and there was never any people being accused of "bad faith" posting in criticism, people weren't called anti-WWE bots. There was not a "just enjoy wrestling" response to people shitting on WWE (which I did as well). Calling people "not real wrestling fans", E-drones, Fed-shills, does not help the discourse. In particular when WWE was getting trashed and that was all fair game.
I might be biased, because I enjoy WWE more than AEW, but I don't think I've been unfair in my criticisms of AEW. AEW was right to fire Punk, AEW shouldn't have shown that footage, and AEW is cold right now can all be true. A lot of that came from because for so long now, it was impossible to separate WWE from Vince McMahon, as Vince's behavior became more and more and more reprehensible. It was becoming extremely difficult to watch WWE without feeling like one was if not supporting, at least enabling Vince as he just continued to get worse and worse and worse (and he was never good to begin with). And in some ways, the product getting so bad, while Vince continued to just be more of a depraved sack of barely-human shit, it was almost like he was rubbing it in our faces. And it took me a longer time to get to that point than it did a lot of other people, but it's not hard to see how they got there.
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Ryushinku
King Koopa
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Post by Ryushinku on Apr 12, 2024 8:51:18 GMT -5
Looks like those clowns in AEW did it again. What a bunch of clowns. It was a good joke at the time, and boy does it fit more and more these days.
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Post by HMARK Center on Apr 12, 2024 9:02:55 GMT -5
AEW is the best wrestling promotion in the world with constantly good wrestling and tv shows so its only natural for people to want to slate it and bash it, the hardcore WWEfans are the worst and every week on WWE tv they seem to take a shot at AEW so as good business WWE seems to be doing, i do feel not many in the industry or true wrestling fans respect them at all as much as AEW and mostly you have think it is bots and the blinded WWE supporters doing the criticising. Someone liking WWE doesn't make them less of a "true wrestling fan" than anybody else, so stop trying to push that narrative. I try to be respectful of AEW and their fans because I'm not watching the shows regularly enough to judge their quality accurately, so my commentary on 99% of their stuff is very limited. But this situation where crowds are a bit down and ratings are a bit down (even though they're perfectly fine judging by the demo rankings) even though the match quality is pretty strong and nobody knows why that's not drawing a bigger number has just led to some of you guys being so angry. Let me just ask... What's more likely? Jim Cornette (whose podcast I don't listen to), Eric Bischoff (whose podcast I don't listen to), Ariel Helwani (whose show I don't watch), Pat McAfee (whose show I don't watch), Triple H, a random collective of YouTube channels and a bunch of bored Twitter users running a coordinated and successful (?) smear campaign against AEW? Or that a bunch of fans who weren't happy with what WWE, 50+ year head start in the market, mind you, were doing went back to watching WWE after they got rid of literally the main reason why WWE had been bad for like 20 years and got better, and that AEW going a bit cold happened to coincide with WWE's yearly peak? "People didn't want an alternative to WWE, they just wanted WWE to be good"... OK, I'm sorry, some of them DID. A lot of it was because nobody expected Vince to ever be actually gone until the rotten prick died. I wish nothing but success for AEW. Seriously, them being around means more wrestling on television and more wrestlers in work making a liveable wage. But this thing of "WWE fans aren't true wrestling fans" isn't the argument to make to get more of them to come around to AEW. I doubt Bischoff or Cornette are in on whatever WWE's strategy might be (they grift for their own benefit), but said strategy was fairly clear: you discredit the opposition, make them seem unserious, as they're going through negotiations. Why else even bring them up during Mania weekend? And the concept that they'd have a hand in shepherding online conversation on wrestling matters via bots/poster farms isn't really a hot take: the data lately not only on Twitter, but on many social media platforms, is that a shockingly high percentage of posts and engagement are coming from corporate backed/paid for/coordinated accounts in all manner of industries. Given the nature of a lot of the loudest voices online when it comes to wrestling and how closely linked a lot of them come off, it'd almost be more shocking at this stage if they weren't doing that. That all said, I fully believe and agree your latter point is a much bigger key in the grand scheme of things: the established market leader improved its product, and many long time fans, who might've walked away during the worst of the Vince years, came back. This ended up even more pronounced for AEW as a lot of that began happening as they were going through the worst of the Punk-related drama, which meant there was a dark cloud over a lot of their proceedings and creative plans that ended up in flux, something that really hurt the sunshiney perception of the promotion that had existed through the pandemic and into early 2022. Some of that was self-inflicted, some of that is beyond their control, but I do believe that for the vast majority of the "normal" audience, that's the main thing going on. But the online/media strategies are a very real thing, in that they drive public perception; yes, a lot of it is concentrated among those into wrestling enough to discuss it online, but passing headlines and quick hashtags or messages going the slightest bit viral absolutely do have an effect, either on the margins of overall viewership/fan engagement or on, potentially, how business partners view a company like AEW in the midst of ongoing negotiations. Not going into specific names, but it's the key to the kind of online message-shaping strategy utilized by a number of political figures and, uh, not-so-good faith actors abroad trying to influence things elsewhere, and the business world has absolutely latched onto that approach.
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deezy
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,688
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Post by deezy on Apr 12, 2024 9:05:50 GMT -5
You know how horrible and toxic the WWE board was? At points people mentioning stuff they enjoyed usually got treated with mockery and snark. And a lot of good posters left because of it. It's quite the opposite here where I've seen posters that aren't trolling or "bad faith" posting get dogpiled on because they said something the majority doesn't agree with. You shouldn't let the opposite opinions of others ruin and dictate your enjoyment of a show. A lot of people still trollvote the WWE shows but there's not a peep in there. This is rough waters right now and it too will pass and things will be better Yeah. When WWE was bad we all shit on it, and people who were enjoying the product had to take all the shitting. We shit on WWE, laughed at the falling ratings and attendance. We mentioned people leaving Backlash early, and the disastrous Seth vs Fiend Hell in a Cell match. We did all of that, and there was never any people being accused of "bad faith" posting in criticism, people weren't called anti-WWE bots. There was not a "just enjoy wrestling" response to people shitting on WWE (which I did as well). Calling people "not real wrestling fans", E-drones, Fed-shills, does not help the discourse. In particular when WWE was getting trashed and that was all fair game. I might be biased, because I enjoy WWE more than AEW, but I don't think I've been unfair in my criticisms of AEW. AEW was right to fire Punk, AEW shouldn't have shown that footage, and AEW is cold right now can all be true. Amen 💯💯💯
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cosmo
Samurai Cop
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Post by cosmo on Apr 12, 2024 9:52:57 GMT -5
You're only a real wrestling fan if you favorite match is Invisible Man vs. Invisible Stan and the coolest spot you've ever seen is Joey Ryan suplexing people with his penis.
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Kalmia
King Koopa
Happy to be here
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Post by Kalmia on Apr 12, 2024 10:47:58 GMT -5
There's no coordinated conspiracy against AEW. It's just a combination of fans with too much time on their hands and a load of well-known wrestling personalities who have realised there's more money in bashing AEW than in bashing WWE. It's all very cynical and takes away from the legitimate criticisms that can be made against AEW.
But that's the world these days. Make people angry about something and fleece them for their time and money. There is more money in anger than in being rational.
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Allie Kitsune
Crow T. Robot
Always Feelin' Foxy.
Celestial Princess in Exile.
Posts: 46,149
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Post by Allie Kitsune on Apr 12, 2024 10:50:10 GMT -5
There's no coordinated conspiracy against AEW. It's just a combination of fans with too much time on their hands and a load of well-known wrestling personalities who have realised there's more money in bashing AEW than in bashing WWE. It's all very cynical and takes away from the legitimate criticisms that can be made against AEW. But that's the world these days. Make people angry about something and fleece them for their time and money. There is more money in anger than in being rational. Enragement = Engagement.
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markymark
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Posts: 18,381
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Post by markymark on Apr 12, 2024 11:01:20 GMT -5
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Apr 12, 2024 11:23:46 GMT -5
my name is first name bunch of numbers and I'm a bot with a bunch of really shitty opinions.
still holds true.
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Post by stan1337 on Apr 12, 2024 11:24:55 GMT -5
My conversation with an anti-AEW troll on Facebook a week ago: I feel like that's what I want to do to every shithead in the world. I don't want to insult them or bring them down. I just want them to open their eyes and be like oh wow I'm a giant gaping asshole I should be kinder to people. It would fix a lot. Good work my friend.
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