Era of the Internets

Bradcore · July 12, 2005

"Worked shoots" is a term that's been floating around heavily since the ECW PPV, and it's somewhat of a misnomer. The WWE knows exactly what they're doing, and "unscripted" isn't the same as a worked shoot. A worked shoot is something like Heymans promo on Vince during the Invasion; insomuch as the work mandated that Heyman cut a vitriolic promo on Vince about things that he would actually like to shoot about. That's not what's happening here. I've no doubt that the highest management wasn't aware of what Matt was going to say, just like with Heymans comment about Matt at ECW ONS, but just because most of the other people didn't know about it doesn't mean it's a shoot. It's completely a work, just that people who are normally told about it wern't told about it.

Now that that's out of the way, here's the focus of the post.

The WWE has decided to work the internet. And it's about time. The internet isn't just going to go away, you have to adapt. The WWE had to adapt to WCW in the mid/late 90's, they had to adapt when they lost Hogan, they've had to adapt before and they're doing it again. This is the beginnings of a new era my friends. From Meanie/JBL, to Brock Lesnar reports on WWE.com, to Matt Hardy, even down to an off hand comment about Nash's glass legs, the WWE is bringing back kayfabe in a whole new way.

Someone in the upper offices wisend up. Maybe someone upgraded their old 286 and discovered the Information Superhighway. Regardless, someone decided to yank their heads out of the sand and actually use what's been given to them. They're using Matt's connection to his fan to further an angle. They're using WWE.com to post exclusive contract "negotiations" with Lesnar. They're using outside resources to find out what the fans want. If you ask me, that's a good thing. Of course we're only seeing it in bits and pieces so far, as if it were an experiment, with Edge/Hardy at the helm.

In any case, it seems to be working. We all got swerved and we obviously love it. A new era is upcoming, I just hope it's not called the "worked shoot" era.

Source

geemoney · July 12, 2005

Does this person who posted this know that only about 1% of WWE's audience (Linda McMahon's number, not mine) visits internet message boards and news sites? So while it's nice for us smarky fans to get swerved, the rest of the crowd is sitting there saying, "huh?"