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Kayfabe and social media


Onyx2

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Triple H Instagrammed himself in front of Wembley when he's supposed to be selling PPV injuries.

 

Steph is always going on about her charity work on Twitter. Meanwhile she's a face-bullying bitch on Raw.

 

Rusev and Lana on Instagram is a clustermuck of epic proportions I can't begin to unravel.

 

Where should the line be drawn between kayfabe and real life now?

 

I'm on the side where the wrestlers are real people, and should talk about whatever they want on social media.

 

We're not in a time where the heel should rough up marks in a bar. In 1997 Vince said "quite frankly, we think you're tired of having your intelligence insulted." Triple H said on the Steve Austin podcast earlier this year that "kayfabe is dead." Max Landis nailed it by saying Raw is a TV programme about wrestling.

 

WWE are keen to compare themselves with serialised TV such as Game of Thrones. We wouldn't hold Kit Harrington to task if he said on Snapchat that "training for that fight was tough but luckily no one got hurt" while high-fiving the White Walker stuntman. Peter Dinklage can appear on Fallon and talk about his character in the third person. So why can't wrestlers?

 

I'd even be fine with say, Ryback suffering a huge beatdown from the Wyatts and then on Twitter saying "@realbraywyatt you know this is a work, right?!" accompanying a picture of welts and bruises.

 

There's simply no point trying to stuff a genie back in the lamp. So why insult intelligence? Embrace that characters are not the same as the talent, and maybe establish credibility among some of the "all fake, innit" crowd. If you're up front about it, you can't be criticised about it. And then maybe the physical exertion will be recognised by non-fans.

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The big problem they have is a lot of the performers don't really have on-screen characters to separate from themselves. In a lot of cases, to invest in them at all you have to care about their social media jokes or whether their push stat is higher/lower than their workrate stat. Game of Thrones has long fight scenes, but not dull, repetitive ones like wrestling shows. Dinklage gets lots more to distinguish Tyrian from himself.

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I don't give a fuck what they do on social media in regards to kayfabe. They're on there interacting to all their real life mates and peers as well as fans, not doing more Raw from their laptops.  Not so keen on not respecting what's supposed to be happening on telly, on telly. The four girls embracing at TakeOver : Brooklyn because they are all mates in real life even though Sasha had been and WOULD STILL be playing a heel and specifically Bayley's enemy (at least for a couple of months) for instance, even though they worked it into the storyline and tried to go with the "for one night you had my respect" business, shouldn't have happened. If it was Sasha's swansong, maybe I let them off, but even then it's pretty daft for it's "Look, they're all mates, it's not real" - ness. But then, I kind of think NXT goes there on occasion anyway. Hunter turning up at TakeOver:London and brushing off his beating at TLC was almost tongue in cheek with the fans in on the joke, to me. But still, daft.

 

DX were the worst for it.

"We're so close because we're mates in real life"

"We're fighting! I can't believe you threw away what we had, we've been mates so long!! Now it's over!!"

"Yeah, we tried to kill each other a few times on telly but we're tagging up again because you know we're mates in real life"

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I think there are three options:

 

1a. The characters are completely separate, 90's wacky and the people behind them post on social media as themselves (the actor) however they want.

 

1b. The characters are still completely separate but the people behind them do not do social media or outside appearances unless in character.

 

2. The characters are an extension of the person and that person becomes that character 24/7. This is similar to 1b but it's a two way street whereas that would be up to the performer to do what they're told.

 

Right now we're in an era of weird option 3 where the characters are separate from the performers but they're the same for some people and different for others and social media is sometimes kayfabe and sometimes reality and the Network is sometimes a work but sometimes a shoot and some characters are steeped in reality and some are completely ridiculous.

 

Given the times we're in and the, quite frankly, fucking abysmal state of the characters on their TV - I'd revert to option 2 and give the talent a bigger role in defining their characters and living them.

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Wrestling should be 100% kayfabed on TV and certain WWE social media pages, especially ones aimed at the kids. It should be a totally self-contained universe. I don't like the idea of Hunter no-selling the injury just so he can fit in with dem ones in the NXT crowd.

 

Wrestlers' own Twitter and social media accounts shouldn't be kayfabed in the slightest. It would be like a soap star continuing an on-screen storyline offscreen and pretending it's real. It's just insulting to people's intelligence.

 

When I first got into the wrestling there was a part of me that thought it was still real, pre-internet. I can't imagine any kid over the age of 6 thinking it's real anymore.

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I suppose the slight difference (and it is slight) is that wrestlers in the main use their ring name to post, then do a weird mix of 'sat in a cafe with the bloke I fought last week, then a week later saying how they are going to get revenge on them' (Ziggler a few years ago springs to mind)

 

It'd be like Kym Marsh changing her Twitter handle to Michelle and still posting pictures of her (Kym Marsh's) kids at home then the next tweet calling Tracy Barlow a cow and telling her not to miss Amy's violin recital

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Interestingly, I noticed that Wade Barrett is using his real name on Twitter now.  

 

What's more important to a wrestler... letting people know what Joe Anoa'i thinks of his cornflakes, or trying to talk people into tuning into Raw to see Roman Reigns with the bonus effects of getting outside celeb retweets and mentions, and plugging merch?  

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