Greetings, friends, from my social media hiatus.
It’s a Hateful World Because Some Folks Seem to Like It That Way
My DVR -- via YouTubeTV -- cutoff last night before AEW’s five-minute overrun got recorded. I therefore logged onto Twitter just long enough to see who won last night’s main event. Alas, after a mere week’s hiatus the sheer negativity smoking off the former bird app felt so overwhelming that I gave up almost immediately. I saw that we’re getting a three-way final in the Gold League next week, so obviously Jay White somehow won the match. However, I couldn’t quickly find a clip of the main event’s last minute, and the rando bizarre hatefulness overwhelmed my poor uncalloused synapses before I could dig deepy.
I would like to say that a lot of folks on the bird app probably need therapy, but in truth, I’ve always believed Tony Khan’s assertion that WWE runs an ongoing information warfare effort against AEW in order to make the product less enjoyable for AEW fans via negative social media interaction. In this, WWE appears to interact a lot like Russian state-sponsored actors. They appear to have hired a small team of mostly non-native-English-speaking posters to amplify the voices of a tiny handful of professional shittalkers mixed with several dozen hardcore “useful idiot” fans. This sort of thing is not difficult to organize and can be extremely effective, especially lately on the bird app since -- ironically -- nearly all the restrictions on bot-networks and their handlers have come down since the platform’s conversion to “X”.
I’m no expert on this stuff, but I am a close personal friend and classmate of Clint Watts, who inadvertently taught us all what to look for when covering Russia’s information operation in the run-up to the 2016 election. The signs seem pretty obvious -- to me, at least. But maybe that’s because deep down, I’d rather ascribe active professional malice to ongoing malicious actions rather than to sheer hateful stupidity. Which is to say that surely most actual wrestling fans just enjoy wrestling whatever their personal tribal bias might be.
That’s what I would prefer to believe, at any rate.
It took awhile, but AEW’s Tony Khan appears to have set up his own bot network maybe 18 months or so ago. Of course, he seems to have done this in a very TK way. His network appears not to trash WWE or other wrestling companies so much as they promote what’s good about his own product. He’s also gotten behind any number of prominent AEW-positive voices, some of whom are decidedly not WWE-friendly. Moreover, there is at least one prominent social media account on the former bird app that I would bet works directly for Khan in the analytics department of his European Football Club. Even a few of my own positive statements about AEW have occasionally gotten magnified all out of proportion to their brilliance by what is obviously a bot network.
I hate this part of the world, but it’s the world we live in.
Alas, being on social media is an unfortunate necessity for As For Football’s Editor. I say this despite knowing full well that AFF’s picks up most of our fans via word of mouth when guys email our stuff to their buddies and/or when they Google “As For Football”. This is why we’ve developed separate logos for a bunch of our new initiatives. We’re trying to make them more memorable because we know that you’re mostly going to find us via Internet search.
Against that, social media referrals come a distant third. Even so, however, social media remains important, and here we are.
So I have to go back.
I can’t believe it, but at some point, I really will need to go back.
Jay White is AEW’s Cactus Jack
Jay White has done outstanding work throughout the Continental Classic. And even before that, really, when he worked with MJF and before that, within the FTR-Punk-Ricky Starks storyline immediately following the start of AEW Collision.
We just established that reading online wrestling discourse is a mistake. But even beyond all the disingenuous information warfare out there, it seems clear that most AEW fans don’t understand White’s role within the company. Because they keep saying that he’s getting “buried.”
It struck me last night during Mark Briscoe’s match with Jay Lethal. Briscoe did the Cactus Jack spot, and BANG BANG!
Simply put, there are several guys vying to be AEW’s Mick Foley, i.e. the super-versatile modern day main event player who puts over main event stars. That guy will be THE critical role player over AEW’s next few years.
I don’t care what anyone says, Mick Foley was the Attitude Era’s real hero. Truthfully, I think most big time fans from that era know it, too. Based on his tribute, we can safely assume that Mark Briscoe wants to be this era’s Real Hero.
Unfortunately for him, Jay White is currently That Guy.
I mentioned at the top that my DVR cut-out right before Dynamite’s finish. This was extremely unusual for YouTube TV, and indeed, by the time I’d logged in this morning, they’d gotten it fixed. So I saw Dynamite’s last five minutes over coffee this morning. White beat Moxley relatively cleanly, setting up an injury angle that will protect Mox next week while also -- immediately -- selling Swerve’s popularity to the crowd. This was outstanding work backed by White’s recent history of excellence, both in the ring and on the mic.
Friends, it’s not some accident that Jay White has been AEW’s co-headliner for something like the past four to six months now. He and Juice Robinson had my favorite match of the year with FTR over the summer in order to revitalize both FTR’s reign as Tag Champs and the Tag Titles overall. He then revitalized Punk before going straight into a campaign to make MJF the biggest babyface in the company. Now he’s in the main event to make Swerve Strickland a star.
Jay has not been THE headliner, but he’s been doing amazing work making headliners.
Guys, this is his actual job.
White’s time at the top will come eventually, I’m sure. For now, however, let’s appreciate the quality of his work on its own merits. He’s been the company’s MVP since the start of Collision, and I love it.
No comments:
Post a Comment