by Rick Scaia
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

Hello, my name is Rick Scaia, and I have been a Triple H Apologist for over three years.  But even my patience has limits.

On the advice of a few readers, I checked out the May 16 edition of Byte This, which included HHH as a guest.  I had been led to believe Triple H filibustered without end against the internet and the idiot wrestling fans who inhabit it.  And while it turned out that HHH's rant was less than 2 minutes long, it actually did contain some of the strongest anti-internet-smart-fan language imaginable.  Language that, in my mind, is completely indefensible from any intelligent perspective.

My first knee-jerk reaction:  obviously, it was a defensive one.  HHH certainly mentioned no names, but you always internalize things like that, so I admit, I had that brief nanosecond of "Jesus, what a dick he is to mock me like that...."

Immediately following that: the realization set in that it was quite possible that HHH was "heeling," just playing a character designed to make his target audience -- in this case, the internet wrestling fans checking out WWE's weekly internet show -- hate him.  I sighed a sigh of moderate relief.

But then the whole mess began to fester in my mind.  If HHH was playing the heel as he dismissed the internet as being of absolutely no value, it actually does NOT excuse his behavior.  At best, it opens up a feedback loop in which we realize, "Triple H is just using the internet to make us hate him by saying the internet is useless...  but if the internet has no use, why is he using it to make us hate him?  Internet: has no use.  But is being used.  Does not compute."  And then, like so many Captain-Kirk-foiled robots, our heads would explode.

The nonsensical logical dead-end, mind you, is the BEST possible spin.  At worst, the HHH's-comments-as-heel-shtick interpretation leads one down a path that terminates at the realization that the Fed has once again lost touch with the way fans want to enjoy the product.  The same company thought that the answer to sagging ratings and Nitro's dominance was caricatures like "The Goon" and "Freddie Joe Floyd" in 1996, so it's not like such a miscalculation is without precedent.  And of course, that means that the massive infusion of good sense that resulted in the start of the Attitude Era in 1997 means that righting the ship is also not without precedent.

But perhaps now I'm getting ahead of myself....  I mean, hell, it's still possible that HHH wasn't "heeling" at all.  Maybe he really was just speaking his mind.  So before we get into the whole discussion of why HHH is wrong if he was just playing a part, we should probably consider this possibility.  Afterall, simply refuting HHH's claims -- assuming he really meant them -- is child's play.

The Internet Sucks (And I Mean That)

There's no better way to do this than to simply go through, point-by-point, and dismiss Triple H's own dismissal of the internet.  [Please keep in mind that transcription and attention to detail are not my strong suits.  In the upcoming paragraphs, I will be "quoting" Triple H from Byte This... however, I grant that I may have altered a few words in the chasm between hearing them and typing them.  I assure you, however, that the intent and tone of each quote remains unaltered.]

HHH's first claim:  "The internet is nothing but a forum for people to criticize anonymously."

I retort:  Uh, hi, my name is Rick Scaia.  And, uh, I think everybody on OO uses their real names, too.  And, come to think of it, it seems like just about every significant online personality, from anywhere on the web, uses his or her real name.  If we're not coming straight up to you, face to face, with our criticisms, it's only because I don't have money to be following WWE across the country and because you don't hang out at the same bars I do.  I honestly think nothing could be more fun than intelligent conversation with someone with a first-hand perspective on what's right and wrong in wrestling today.  It's simply not a feasible option; given that limitation, I am about as un-anonymous as is humanly possible.  If anything, I'm TOO un-anonymous: I imagine readers actually get sick of hearing about my favorite sports teams, my band, my drinking prowess, my travel plans...  but it's all me, baby.

Another gem:  "Internet writers are just jack-offs who've never stepped foot in a ring and are just frustrated wannabes."

I retort:  Um, no.  For one, I have been in a ring.  Granted, it was during some downtime at one of the Pillman Memorial "fantasy camps," and all I did was run the ropes twice and fall down once, but hey, IN THE RING is IN THE RING, baby.  And second, I am manly enough to admit that I'm probably too big of a pussy to be classified as a "wannabe" wrestler.  I know I couldn't hack it and keep myself sane and healthy.  To borrow another of my favorite euphemisms, I am not one of the class of "jock sniffers" who wants so badly to be a real athlete that I am compelled to hang out with an associate with real athletes.  What I am is somebody who is entertained by the product; that I have the outlet and ability to write intelligently about it for an audience is secondary.  And the "jack-off" comment?  Hey, I was always told that was normal and healthy; I make no apologies!

A third HHH-ism:  "The internet is full of 12-year-old kids talking about something they know nothing about."

I retort:  Clueless 12-year-olds do exist on the internet.  I do not dispute that.  But they are not here on OO, and I dare say they are not anywhere that really matters.  OO panders to the 20-something crowd, and if anything the REALLY major sites are operated by guys in their 30s and 40s.  This is an utterly inane claim by HHH, and to be fair, some later joking comments about the "12-year-old" quote seem to indicate that HHH wasn't dead serious about that part of his claim.  But the "something they know nothing about" line lingers...

HHH Logic, if we read between the lines of HHH-isms #2 and #3, seems to be that only those in the industry have the privilege of possessing valid opinions about professional wrestling.  By this logic: the industry experts who focused on a divorce storyline last spring and handed HHH a puppydog knew exactly what they were doing.  And those of us who suggested that that direction would ruin WrestleMania and maybe even short-circuit any chance HHH would have of being a viable babyface were clueless.  Similarly: the WWF-employed gurus who invented Katie Vick and graced us with faux corpse-fucking should be hailed as geniuses!  And it goes without saying that the internet jack-offs who begged for them to kill the angle before it went any further than one stupid 3-minute promo on the grounds that it was inane bullshit likely to kill the Kane character once and for all couldn't have been further off the mark.

C'mon HHH, cop to it:  you, of anyone, should have found out in the past 18 months that simply having "WWE" in the upper left of your paycheck does not make you an expert on pro wrestling.  They handed you lemons TWICE, and try as you did to make lemonade, you still fell short.  And worse, you had to endure the fact that the internet was right both times: puppydogs and manual transmissions led directly to the lamest (and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word: weak and handicapped by prior events) WM main event in recent memory and to the death of Kane the Main Eventer.

Expertise and the value of one's opinions, simply put, have nothing to do with one's affiliation.  WWE-affiliated personnel are not bullet-proof just because they are "in the industry."  That doesn't necessarily mean that everybody on the outside looking in should be considered equally legitimate as an industry insider, however.  It simply means that the measuring stick for "expertise" should be more directly tied to intelligence and perceptiveness.  You take an intelligent, perceptive person and put them in any situation, and it won't matter what they studied in college or what their life experiences are, they will be more likely to succeed than somebody whose neurons aren't firing quite as prodigiously.  And I like to think that there are plenty of people on the internet, myself and other OO-ites certainly included, who make up for a lack of WWE pay stubs with a respectable level of mental acumen.

And on top of that, you've got to consider that a good percentage of fans who care enough to spend their time writing about wrestling on the internet have probably been watching for a number of years.  Even if your name isn't Galileo J. Einstein and your IQ isn't 213, you're bound to learn the ins and outs of a particular form if you observe it long enough.  There are people on the internet who have been watching wrestling for decades... and their opinions cannot be dismissed too easily; in many cases, they've seen more or what works and doesn't work than the people who are in control of creative.  And tell me this:  if familiarity with past trends and trendsetters isn't important, why did Tom Pritchard feel it was so vital that WWE developmental workers prepare summaries on 101 of wrestling's most influential performers earlier this year?

Of course, the most valuable internet "critics" will be the ones who can combine intelligence/perceptiveness with the long-term memory of a hardcore fan.  And I honestly believe those types do exist.  I also grant that the clueless idiot posited by HHH exists, too.  But just as I think there might be insightful teenagers who might be sharp enough to offer up valid opinions despite a relatively short memory, I think there are just as many "established" 30-plus year old pundits who are so frustratingly stunted as people and as fans that they make me want to punch them in the face.  All I'm saying is that there is good, valuable opinion out there to go with the blithering idiocy; and they both span the entire spectrums of age, experience, and intellect.

Finally, HHH opines: "The internet means nothing" and "Those opinions mean nothing to me."

Even assuming he meant to limit his criticisms of the internet to wrestling-related matters, this is demonstrably ill-informed of HHH.  Without even getting into the value of the 'net in terms of a present and future source of revenue to the company, the internet has value in the precise areas that HHH claims it to be worthless: in the areas of information, feedback, and opinion.

If the internet means nothing to HHH, maybe it should.  Afterall, he could have listened to us in 2002 and maybe used his clout at early junctures to change things so that he wouldn't have been involved in two of the three worst feuds of the year.  And even if it is actually true that internet opinions do not matter to HHH, it cannot be denied that they matter to WWE.  

I'm not just talking about the feedback forms WWE encourages fans to fill out with regards to all shows, or the surveys they've put up on their website.  I'm talking about the fact that I can go to my web logs and see visitors from "wwe.com"... and I'm plenty confident that even bigger sites are of even bigger interest to the Fed, too.  I don't know what they're doing with the information, but WWE knows what we're thinking.  And even before the net, certain newsletter publishers were more than happy to tell you about how they'd heard through the grapevine that their "dirtsheet" was seen on Vince McMahon's desk.  WWE cares, and always has, about the opinions of their fans. ALL of them.

You have to wonder what makes HHH so disinterested in them even if his company is, don't you? I find myself wanting to believe that a guy who usually comes across as so deserving of the nickname "Cerebral Assassin" could not be so utterly misguided.  So I'm left to consider the possibility that he was using his massive brain power to try to dupe Byte This' captive internet audience with heel banter...

The Internet Sucks (*winkwink* *nudgenudge*)

So what does it say if HHH was just heeling last Friday?  Why can't we just say "Oh, alright, I get it now" and move on?

Because, at the heart of it, this isn't about HHH.  He's just the guy that said the right (wrong?) things at a time when I'd gotten just about fed up with having all sorts of half-baked ideas floating around in my head about the nature of the 'net and the Fed's apparent attitude towards it.  HHH was the trigger for me to get all those thoughts together into one big thesis.  For better or for worse.

You see, back in 1997, the Fed underwent a massive transformation.  They sent retarded gimmicks packing, and embraced "Attitude."  Vince McMahon made various mission statements about how the new approach would "no longer insult the intelligence" of wrestling fans.  And sure, that philosophical change coincided with the creation of "RAW Magazine" and AOL chat sessions, both of which sometimes saw backstage/out of character elements come into play.

But ultimately, that shift to "Attitude" was about the on-screen product.  Gimmicks and characters were not necessarily retired in favor of 100% reality, but all characters did become more realistic.  So did their behaviors and relationships with those around them.  Gone were wrestling plumbers... and in their place were performers and personalities more easily identified with by fans.  Just about the entirety of 1998 and 1999 was carried by the Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon feud, which would have been impossible just a year previous.  The Austin/McMahon feud required the acknowledgement of Vince as the "boss" of the then-WWF, and it required that the Fed be willing to retire the utterly pointless "Ringmaster" gimmick in favor of letting Steve Austin be "Stone Cold."

The shades of gray, the more visceral storytelling, those were the hallmarks of the Attitude Era.  Those are things that mattered at the end of the day.  The fact that the Attitude Era also coincided with the "Get It?" campaign, in which the company openly admitted that it's product was "fake" and rigged, is not as important as maybe it once seemed.  In retrospect, the main thing that I "get" is the fact that just about everybody in the world already knew wrestling was fixed in 1997; having the WWF admit it didn't turn people on to the product...  but more realistic and relevant storylines and performers did.

But somehow, in the years that followed, the phenomenon of wrestling admitting its own "fakeness" became the distinguishing characteristic of the Attitude Era.  Worked shoot angles were all the rage for a couple of years in WCW, and acknowledging the backstage aspects of the business filtered into TV storylines regularly by the turn of the new century.

How in the blue hell does this little tangent relate to our topic?  Simple: it's my way of explaining how the internet, over the past 6 years, has lost its exclusive claim to "insider" elements of wrestling fandom.  Whether by design following the realization that SOMEbody was going to make money on insider stuff and it should be the wrestling companies, or by accident because of an on-going misunderstanding of what really made "WWF Attitude" click, the worth and value of the internet and the entire "smart" perspective to wrestling fans has become so confused and confusing an issue that the on-screen product is no longer entirely scripted entertainment, and the internet is no longer solely populated by genuinely reliable, smart, insider chatter.

The whole smart/insider phenomenon has been co-opted because of this.  In recent years, shows like "Confidential" and "Byte This" have become more ubiquitous, and are no longer relegated to playing to a tiny niche audience.  The message seems to be that's it's now perfectly OK to pay attention to the man behind the curtain: the Fed is marketing and making money off shows that glorify the insider point of view.

But if Triple H is going on the ostensibly "smart" internet show, Byte This, and using it to continue pushing his heel character over the edge, what does that REALLY say?  Simple: it says that the smart show ain't so smart, afterall.  It's just another tool for manipulating the audience.

In the past couple of years, the term "New Work" has been casually worked into smart fan lingo to describe the Fed's post-Attitude treatment of the internet and the insider underground.  And because we had a term to describe when the company is not totally kayfabing us, but also not being 100% honest and open, we sort of resigned ourselves to accepting it.  Give something a name, and you legitimize it.

Well, I'm sick of the New Work.  I don't hate it.  I'm not going to rail against it. I've just had enough of it.  It is irrelevant to me as a fan.  WWE's attempts to be "smart," for the most part, are without much value to independent-thinking fans.

Look, what do they give us that's usually on the level?  Injury updates.  And sometimes, they'll be upfront with releasing and signing workers, though that is a hit and miss proposition.  And that's the type of info that is easily obtainable any number of other places.  

Furthermore, I'd venture a guess that "newsy" type things are really only about one-quarter of what's important to most of the fans who enjoy the insider perspective.  I mean, yes, there are the aggressively compulsive fans who simply must know the political ramifications of somebody getting a haircut, and who are willing to pay five bucks a month to know about it before anybody else.  It boggles my mind what passes for "news" sometimes, and baffles me further that there is a niche audience for it.

But the majority of right-thinking smart fans are probably content to collect the IMPORTANT news a couple times a week.  What's more interesting to them is the recapping and analysis of PPVs and weekly shows, the context of the top news stories, stuff like that.  Dry information isn't what makes smart fans tick... it's the breaking it down, giving it context, and incorporating it into one's fandom.

So while the Fed has been commendably straight-forward with us about Scotty 2 Hotty's health status, they have never once presented us with an honest, from-the-inside editorial about why Judgment Day was one of the least-anticipated PPV cards in recent memory.  In a day and age when the vast majority of fans are "smart to the business," the Fed seems willing to give them the dry information.  But they remain steadfastly against catering to the more traditional definition of the "smart" fan: the hardcore thinking fan who likes using that insider information to posit how and why things work in pro wrestling.

Time to step back for a second:  should the Fed ever even consider REALLY catering to the smarts?  It's a fair question.  Four and five years ago, it was easier to seem relevant and smart for the WWF, because they could point their insider, shoot-based magazine articles and stuff directly at WCW.  At a time when smart fans were mesmerized by the Monday Night Wars, that made the Fed's willingness to address the competition seem like one of the most honest and relevant decisions ever.  But today, there is only one place to turn that honest, relevant gaze:  inward.

No company, however, wants to put its resources into a project that delivers bad press for the company.  And since part of what the smart wrestling fan does is criticize and look for places where things could be improved, presenting a genuinely, credibly smart POV is not something that would be all that attractive to WWE.  I mean, movie studios don't release a film, and then advertise it with a fair cross sampling of reviews.  When you look in your newspaper and see a box ad for "Bringing Down the House" with the quotes "Uproariously Funny" and "Laugh Out Loud Hilarious" in big letters, you know somebody's not quite being honest with you.  But that's business.

And WWE is in the business of making money, not in the business of letting arm-chair quarterbacks expose their flaws to the public at large.  Without knowing Thing One about any of their internal structures or strategic plans for the future, I can't really make a singular case for WWE EVER adopting an honest approach towards smart fans.  Perhaps they would see value in collecting the insights of this smarter breed of fan and then use them to better the product.  Maybe it would be a simple matter of profitability if they thought the truly smart niche was big enough, or if undersized, willing enough to pay for some sort of insider subscription service.  Or maybe the motivation could be something as utterly intangible as creating a "buy-in" for fans; if they thought the company was being honest with them, they, in turn, would become more loyal consumers.  There are a few different ways you could go with the argument... and again using the movie studio example:  they may not be totally honest in their advertising, but they do have good relationships with critics/the media, letting them preview movies and sending stars out to do interviews and the like.  In short, there is precedent for a company to work arm-in-arm with someone who may not always present your product in the best light.

Only WWE can really address how a re-alignment of their "smart" outlets fits into their financial and strategic plans.  I really don't know what the market size would be for something like this, either.  But given that the vast majority of wrestling websites have become increasingly unreadable in recent years -- whether over-loaded with comically-insignificant minutiae masquerading as "news," or populated by big, blustery blowhards more intent on being big enough assholes so that they can "get over" rather than on making any salient points, or limited to little more than infomercials for hard copy newsletters and pay services -- I find myself quietly convinced that any semblance of a genuinely smart wrestling fan underground may soon die out forever.

In my rare excursions outside the cozy confines of OO, I don't see a whole lot good going on.  When I do see it, it's usually in some relatively obscure corner of the 'net.  Even more obscure than OO threatens to become because of my insistence on keeping OO a website that I would actually, you know, spend my spare time reading.  

By co-opting the smart underground with their New Work, WWE opened the flood gates, and created swarms of "half-smarts" or "casual smarts" -- fans who have the dry information of a smart fan, but who lack perceptiveness or fandom to do anything useful with it.  Like Scott Steiner distracted by shiny objects, these fans are fascinated with collecting more and more tiny morsels of useless information.  But they aren't necessarily interested in putting it to any use.  So with these casual smarts looking for a certain type of website, the type of website that would like to be profitable predictably changes its focus to cater to that fan.  We shan't name names nor get into a pointless "chicken or the egg" debate, but suffice it to say that the abundance of sites that now lack any really useful content geared towards really smart fans makes it hard to maintain the underground.

The Fed sort of pushed things above ground, and with their attitude towards the internet and insider fans becoming ever more obvious following things like Triple H's diatribe on Byte This, it seems like there is little hope for things to change.  Maybe I am being selfish or projecting my own type of fandom onto others who may not actually share it...  but I'd like to think that -- when I take my "mark" hat off after watching a show or attending an event -- there will always be a place where I can go, put my "smart" hat on, and share thoughts with like-minded fans.

But as things stand now,  the Fed makes it hard for that sort of place to thrive.  The internet, to them, has evolved into little more than a tool to manipulate fans into knowing that WWE wants them to know.  And at times, to try to trick them into thinking what WWE wants them to think.  Perhaps they have successfully created an army of these "half-smarts" who can be manipulated this way.... however, they've gotta realize that every step they take down that road is just going to annoy and alienate the smart fans who've been around on the internet for 10 years or more.

We don't need HHH coming on the internet show calling us useless to hate him.  We need him going out on TV and performing at a high level and in compelling storylines to make us hate him.  And then if he wants to come on the internet, we'll all change hats -- us from "mark" to "smart" and HHH from "obnoxious prick champion" to "intelligent student of the game" -- and have us a nice talk about how and why said performance and storylines worked or didn't work.

Ah, who am I kidding?  It'll never happen...   

Conclusions

To bring this back at least part way to where it started, let's just reiterate that there is no way to look at Triple H's comments last week and have them come out looking even remotely sensible.  If he was being honest and straight-forward with us, then his opinions are ill-informed and pretty easily countered with more sensible ones.  If he was just heeling -- working us -- then it's the most dramatic possible indictment on the worth of the WWE's smart-oriented infrastructure.  In short, it's proof that the Fed has no intentions of ever really being honest with us.

But like I mentioned above, this isn't really about HHH at all.  It's about the place of the internet and the smart perspective in the grand scheme of things.  As it stands now, there is almost no haven for the genuinely smart fan to call home.  WWE's outlets continue to perpetrate the New Work and to feed disinformation to fans as it suits them.  A lot of websites that are out there are colored by those public messages and more subtle disinformation campaigns; and sure, some smart sites delve into blithering nonsense, too, and that's not helping our cause to forge a viable sub-sect within the already-socially-dubious caste of Known Wrestling Fans.

At the end of the day, I guess what I'd like to see the Fed do one of two things:  if the "smart" fan is deemed a significant enough demographic, somebody from whom money can be made, then they should take a hands-on approach to dealing with those fans as honestly as possible.  They should create and support outlets for honest news and analysis about their product.  If they want to be a "news outlet," they should be as willing to present the gory details about misbehavior on their own roster as they were to rehash recent events at Lex Luger's house.  If they want us to believe a columnist or magazine article that hypes an event or match as the best ever, we need to know that person has qualified himself as credible by openly criticizing obvious missteps.  And it goes without saying that if they do wish to pursue this ballsy course of action, they should enforce a strict separation of work and shoot; I like changing my hat, and only get annoyed when they try to convince me that my wrestling angles are real or waste my time bullshitting me when they are supposedly being honest.

Alternatively, if the smart fan is written off as an unprofitable lost cause of a demographic, then just get the hell out of the business.  Serve us All Work All The Time.  That's cool.  I tune in and attend live shows to be entertained, not to be informed.  That would leave the small niche market of smart fans to rely on websites, newspaper articles, and media appearances to get the real story.  It might even be a good thing to thin the herd and get rid of some of those half-smarts. We'd survive, just underground.  We we started.  Maybe where we belong.

But this fence-sitting has got to end.  In 1997, Vince McMahon declared that the era of insulting the audience had ended.  Well, that worked for a while.  It's just that lately, I'm feeling as insulted as ever.

E-MAIL RICK SCAIA
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Rick Scaia is a wrestling fan from Dayton, OH.  He's been doing this since 1995, but enjoyed it best when the suckers from SportsLine were actually PAYING him to be a fan.

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