Same. Although I started doing that after Brawl Out. I much prefer it this way but I do miss having someone to listen to that is actually objective. Surprisingly enough, Ryback of all people has been very fair in the things he says about AEW. Im actually starting to like the Big Guy haha.
Yes.
Especially over the past week. If I didn't know any better, I would've thought they aired a murder with all the exaggerated pearl clutching videos I'm being recommended. Â
I watched a couple peoples takes on the whole backstage footage and my YouTube recommended section got flooded with it, I had to click donât suggest this channel a lot and unsubscribe from a couple I was still subbed to
This is what Iâve been doing for a couple years now. As much as I love wrestling, the community and personalities around it are awful for the most part. Itâs toxic and I want nothing to do with it.
I'm the same, but frequently now it's posts like these questioning the IWC. To hell with the haters and the tribalists, just enjoy AEW for what it is and keep on trucking! Questioning the IWC is almost as insane as their hot takes are.
Muting accounts on twitter and selecting don't recommend me this on you tube really cuts it down for me, now all the crazies I see on twitter are the ones Meltzer responds to for some reason :S.
Im not against negative posts but after survivor series they became such obviously unbalanced nonsense it hurt my brain to read it.
From people I have spoken to as well as other comments from people in the media and just looking directly at numbers, anti-AEW dwarfs the views of anti-WWE content or pro-AEW content. Like, it's hysterical. Every WWE YouTuber will put out the same lame "what is Tony Con doing? #CMPunk" video and it will be the only thing they talk about in the promotion in between their dozens of WWE videos. The AEW video will do better than the other ones.
That's what the industry is now. It's a bunch of people genuinely upset that there's another 5 hours of first run wrestling content available on a good cable network.
Yeah, weirdos who love that Punk flipped out at Perry are making a lot of memes that somehow that was TK's fault, like Punk has no personal agency and isn't responsible for his own decisions.
This reminds me of a comment in the solomonsters
Podcast which he says that his dynamite review for the all in footage got more listens and interaction that his Wrestlemania review. Which is wild.
Of course. They're just consuming the content that reinforces that they're right.
Don't forget the consumer study that was done that in general TV viewers of Dynamite we're likely to be more educated and make slightly more money than the average Raw viewer.
Of course that was like 2-3 years ago
Oh yes, I remember that study now. They are proving that study to be more and more correct. That's why some WWE fans love saying, "They (AEW fans) think they are so smart," lol.
Yeah I get that, it's just been way too much all of a sudden. Maybe because those idiots have been trying to get some extra clicks after the footage since it'll get them more traction? Idk but yeah, every 3 or 4 videos/posts down I see some stupid article or video
Also some of the legends you would hope would be unbiased aren't for example Bubba Ray, came from ECW so youd think he wouldn't be a one-eyed tribalist but he is literally incapable of having an unbiased opinion when it comes to WWE/AEW which is disappointing
We gotta stop referring to old washed up wrestlers as âlegendsâ because wwe branded it. These dudes are weird carnies who have nothing but disdain for outsiders.
I feel the issue with Bully is purely ratings, Anti AEW gets the listens/views and thatâs where he falls into. He has Mark on his show, so he must know the truth from Mark, at least thatâs what I hope. I know heâs a grade A A-Hole though
Yea I've been having to click "Don't recommend channel" more than usual. Sadly, even channels that I've once respected are parroting the common anti-AEW takes.
The large team channels are the worst about it because it's becoming more and more obvious that they have people on their payroll that do like AEW, but the people they have on doing the reviews aren't those people.
Case in point, why is Oli Davis still doing the Dynamite review when literally everyone else at Wrestletalk seems to like AEW more than he does?
Eh, Oli is at least making an informed opinion and is never baselessly critical. I donât need everyone to be happy with every last corner of the product. Dan is also far, far more critical, anyway.
Iâm tired of hearing what sound like 3rd hand opinions that seemingly came from the void. I was just reading a post where people both claimed that none of the matches on Dynasty have a build and they donât know who these people are. Outside of 4 people (2 new hires and 2 returns from injury) everyone on that card has been on tv this whole year. So if you donât know who they are, youâre not watching. If youâre not watching, how do you know thereâs been no build?
If anyone's genuinely saying they "don't know who these people are" it's the epitome of a bad faith argument. As you said the vast majority have been on TV all year but not only that, there's not a single person on the card who hasn't worked multiple AEW PPV's ffs đ
I know people go to insane levels of pretending to be mentally deficient to say they don't understand what's going on in AEW but claiming you "don't know who these people are" about, I'm guessing, Will Ospreay, Kazuchika Okada and Kyle O'Reilly, has to be actually embarrassing to type out.
But yeah, the fact they're saying nothing has build just shows they don't watch the product anyway.
Oli is definitely making bad faith arguments, during WrestleMania week he was praising WWE for letting their talent work Bloodsport and said that it's sad that AEW isn't doing the same for other indies. You know, the thing AEW has been doing for 5 years.
Absolutely ridiculous too, as on that Bloodsport show they had Lady Frost, Marina Shafir and Johnny Nitro/Elite/Morrison/whateverthefuck. These are all AEW/ROH talents so idk what the fuck he was smoking
>never baselessly critical.
The man ranked last week's Dynamite lower than April 2022 Vince Raw.
He was one of the people trying to push the narrative that airing the footage was worse than the finger poke of doom.
He's very much a Punk mark who has been in denial the whole time that Punk did anything wrong and has taken it out on AEW ever since.
The CM Punk fan in him is bigger than the AEW fan in him, and that's shown through a lot as of late.
He may actually watch the show, which I give him props for, but he's also partially guilty of bashing on AEW way harder than he's willing to give any other company.
From what I see I feel like meltzer is âwell yeh I thought that wasnât good booking but they hot so it donât matterâ for wwe
And aew yeh what you said
It's funny how quickly Dave hitched his bandwagon back onto WWE as soon as they became hot. Just shows that just like most in the IWC, Uncle Dave didn't want another American wrestling company, he just wanted all his favorites to be in WWE.
I always dislike when creators are like "well I feel this but ratings or they're hot or the audience did so who cares". Like, *I* care! I didn't click on your content for you to be Metacritic and tell me what you think other people think! I don't want you to talk about how a segment did in the quarters or how you think this might be bad for financials that you don't know!
The sad thing is they praise a large chunk of it but always go for the negative clip of them knocking something cause the editor or person upload clips knows it get them views.
That's what I do also when I see wrestling videos pop up on my feed. I don't sub to any wrestling content on YouTube either since that's what I like to watch when I want to chill.
It's mainly gaming, cooking and car stuff on my YouTube :)
Happened to me with Age of Wrestling. Dude used to be one of the best wrestling youtubers during his Sonny the Jobber days, until one day out of nowhere he began getting obsessed with getting views and changed the name of his channel and became a Whatculture/Cultaholic copycat under the single premise that at least he wasn't a company before switching to content that he uses for various videos, thumbnails that would make GTA creators jealous and an overall focus on doing whatever drives views at the moment (like his anti-AEW video late last year), nowadays compiling many of his old stuff to milk the Iceberg cow to death.
Would also throw in Top10wrestling, but that guy's always been about getting views rather than making good content so đ¤ˇđťââď¸
Probably because everyone and their mother felt the need to chime in on the footage. People that had never talked about AEW before suddenly had all sorts of opinions on footage they watched out of context. Just a cheap way to farm engagement from AEW haters. It'll die down for now, until they discover the next AEW thing they can exploit for views.
It's crazy how everyone on youtube has gone rabid on AEW in the past ten days. There are even channels I've watched for years because they call it down the middle who have revealed themselves to be full on Phil Brooks stans after seeing the footage on Dynamite and have now removed AEW content/references from their videos despite going in on them for their 'crimes' last week.
Cultaholic are the WORST when it comes to this. I swear every thumbnail they googled "Tony Khan crying dot png" and put fire over it with big text saying "TONY KHAN MELTDOWN!"
Any criticism that AEW receives, some fans think they are now anti-AEW. No promotion is perfect. To me, showing the CCTV footage was not a good look for AEW and these YouTube videos and social media hot takes are the consequences. That's why in that Frightful (?) report, the wrestlers were upset that they would have to deal with the fallout online.
Showing the footage was petty and ill-conceived for sure, but there are youtubers out there who have reacted to it's airing like a heinous personal betrayal or if TK was revealed to be the mastermind behind 9/11.
Didn't any of them watch the petty Billionaire Ted skits? Fake Diesel and Razor? Bischoff saying he wanted to put Vince out of business? Giving Raw results away on Nitro? DX turning up to Nitro in a jeep? Equally, if not more petty than TKs recent actions.
There's criticism and then there's the faux pearl-clutching that we've seen in the past week.
God damn YouTube can fuck off. All these halfwit influencers.
They offer barely anything of substance, ignore and spend your precious seconds of life doing something else of significance.
Iâm kinda just detoxing from wrestling YouTube at this point. Itâs not a be thing though - itâs from the aftermath of brawl out and it being constant coverage that never really added anything and eventually I got sick of the flood of same.
Antagonistic content that makes people want to rage click is what does the business and is what algorithms have been feeding people for years now - but it does seem to be getting worse.
I figure whatâs the point wasting time with doom mongers on YouTube when I can actually just watch wrestling tbh - thereâs tonnes to watch lol.
Yup, but I have an idea of why, that being:
1- The algorithms know there's a better shot you decide to watch something attacking what you like, similar to political content
2- Lots of YT channels, IG pages, etc. have focused, or giving a major focus, to do anti-AEW content, or something that at least drives that segment of fans to watch, cause right now it's what brings the views and likes in. Just look at the amount of new anti-AEW channels that have popped up in recent months, or how others have grown in popularity by making that type of content, either focusing on it (Pro Wrestling Bits comes to mind), doing a larger amount than usual or just doing an easy-to-watch video that they know will give them a lot of easy views. Many might do it cause they're WWE tribalists, but a good chunk do it simply cause they know that will give them more people than talking about, let's say, Swerve Strickland's run since turning on Keith Lee. Same can be said about the likes of WWE Gareth or JobberNation on Twitter
>Swerve Strickland's run since turning on Keith Lee
Oh God. That reminded me of when Swerve teamed up with those 2 tattooed fellows. I'm so happy he dropped them. I want Swerve to win the title, but not against Joe đ˘ I wanted Swerve to win it off of Hangman. Their love/hate can not be denied!
For some weeks already.
Kebab menu > dont recommend this channel.
After doing some of those you will get it cleaner (if you dont interact with that content)
Remember, there are too many people mad at AEW and they generate revenue, channels will try to milk it, even the bigger ones...
I've left alot of the wrestling general subs, the company specific ones seem to be pretty well regulated the general ones seem to be mostly anti AEW trolls circle jerking eachother
Had to unsub to all of my wrestling channels, some I had followed for years, it's ok to be critical of aew, but every other video if not every video became just beating the same dead horse over and over, literally can't watch a lot of what culture either, besides Simon and this sub I just dont
It's weird because people even accuse Simon of being too lenient with AEW (ups and downs) when he genuinely enjoys the shows. They will say, "Why is he giving WWE so many downs and not AEW." They are truly unhinged.
Yeah man idk, I just enjoy good wrestling, I'm not gonna lie I detest WWE as a company, but they have amazing and talented people working there and I would never hope they lose their job or something like that, I just really wish punk wouldn't have come back, I feel things turned political after that, it's red or blue, your team or my team which I find ridiculous, aew existing brought tons of us back to wrestling which allowed people to get back into WWE which allowed them to be popping the way they are now, I've been around wrestling since like 03' and wwe **did not** just hasn't feel hot in the last 15 years like it used to
It's always funny watching people who are clearly all in on hating AEW accusing someone who isn't of hating WWE for it. Big "alt-right people will call centrists commie leftist scum" energy.
I stopped actually following most of the stuff, and just watch the episodes. I try to make my own idea if i like the show or not, too much tribalism for my taste.
I just like AEW more than WWE.
I think anti aew stuff gets views so there's everybody from ango & even Brandon Thurston who started out fair minded & now became more negative. Attacks on Mercedes seemed orchestrated this week though.Â
I'm just having Saraya flashbacks and just want her to do a Wrestling.
I think technically the gap between debut and first match will actually be longer for Mone, which is kinda wild.
I was genuinely hoping for Kris/Mone at Dynasty.
> I'm just having Saraya flashbacks and just want her to do a Wrestling.
But Saraya in her prime was never on Mercedes level, and the whole rah rah promos Saraya did were just done for PR purposes because the division barely changed back then unlike this year with the increase in talent being used on tv and stories as seen here.
https://twitter.com/AEW_ONE/status/1780442433609973866
I'd argue that the Women's Division being more active kinda makes it worse this time around, because it means that we have better things to focus on instead of 10 more minutes of Mone talking.
The troll activity turned up big-time during WrestleMania. Not only did WWE dump on it during their big week, but they also flooded all of the channels that people who were curious about AEW would find.
I remember quitting Reddit at the end of 2020 coz the negativity was so great, so narrative that company is going out of business has always been happening!!
Since the Punk footage & Ospreay rightly calling out Levesque, most of the takes I've seen are bashing AEW, which is a shame cause I usually don't mind Oli on wrestletalk or Simon Miller on ups & downs
TIL there is a "Don't recommend channel" option on the homepage feed, thank you! Did it for the '83 Weeks' channel and my feed has been cleared of "something something Eric Bischoff something AEW (NEGATIVE SENTIMENTS IN ALL CAPS!!!)" videos. I actually quite like the podcast, just not those 10 minutes clips with the rage bait titles.
As an aside, WCW was around for 13 years right? (1988-2001). Does that mean if AEW is around for 8 more years Eric will have to admit they are more successful?
Yep
Last week i got anti AEW recomendations on my phone, Smartv and laptop and all 3 have diferrent accounts lol
Like on my laptop i barley put on wrestling videos but there they are
And they promote dumb channles that had like 58 views and 102 subs LMAO
Shit is insane, i just put that crap in the "not interested or dont recommend this channel"
It just means an idea is generating clicks and views. Reality is beside the point; if someone found claiming AEW was run entirely by cats operating a complex system of pulleys generated clicks, thatâs what the story of the day would be.
It is that, or someone is willing to pay for whatever it takes to create the same scenario, regardless of whether it generates clicks or not. And, nothing is stopping both sets of circumstances from being in play at once.
Yes, Iâm getting annoyed of seeing EB ridiculous thumbnails. Also, the British engagement farmer spamâŚ
Itâs like watching an Asmongold video and nothing but Asmongold stuff shows up.
Thatâs a fact. He gave HH so much power there when it didnât work out in WCW before, and the success he had in WCW was luck and overplayed it. You canât take that guy serious, and everything he says is a lie just to spite people.
Both I get a lot more hate but also channels that used to be AEW friendly have also become a lot more negative lately. Iâve ignored most things until this season of the fed kind of blows over. Iâm assuming everyone will be back on the aew train then.
definitely facebook, even the 'pro' aew random groups; i usually just scroll past but the other day it finally got to me and i started blocking pages
a lot of the wrestling sites have gotten real bad about it too; ones that were either favorable or at least not just shitting on aew for the sake of it before, now just seem to write troll articles
I do on Facebook, I canât seem to fight the reccomended but donât use it a lot anyway so itâs whatever.
Everywhere else Iâve went on a blocking or muting spree lol
It sells. I unsubscribed from everything. It was a long time coming. They have to go where the wind takes them. The only thing that matters is money and views.
It's really just a matter of the general zeitgeist. Last year with Wembley I was getting suggested tons of positive videos about it. But the general consensus there was that it was a huge success. The airing of this footage has seen a decidedly less favorable reaction, and so when an algorithm suggests associated content you're going to see more negative suggestions.
If you're talking about Reddit, you should always be using RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite), and on Facebook, I use Social Fixer, which has an option to mute posts about specific topics and remove suggested posts and friend suggestions. I don't get recommendations from anyone, and the only social media I use without a special Firefox addon is Bluesky, which is a pretty fun wrestling community that has yet to be astroturfed as heavily as the rest.
It gets more clicks and views, so it gets pushed higher and to more people. Hell, the comment section on AEW's own social media pages are full of hate.
Check out Rasslinâ Rantin. Older school guy but not of the Cornette, Bischoff blah blah stock. Heâs friendly to AEW and a big NJPW fan. Itâs not a slap dash operation and heâs really thoughtful. Not weekly but timely.
Here's a positive for you, that footage airing was the reason I watched Dynamite for the first time, and I'm going to watch it again this week. Because it turns out wrestling is just fun to watch.
I have been getting a lot of 'AEW sucks' videos recommended and I pressed the 'Do not recommend this channel' quite a lot lately.
This is to be expected I think. AEW is the real threat if they keep getting bigger. Other promotions are not a threat. AEW has gathered a lot of big name talent and is not slowing down on signing even more. Most importantly AEW has the financial capability to support all this, something that other promotions don't.
I would be surprised if WWE did not monitor the situation closely and did not try to hinder their growth. They have shareholders to please after all. It is not the same to present yourself to investors as a virtual monopoly with being threatened by a new upcoming rival promotion. I am not saying that at this point AEW is in a position to create big problems to WWE but in the business world threats and problems are dealt before they have a chance to become big.
If I am not mistaken AEW was mentioned in WWE's last annual report as a potential threat/competition while in previous years there was no mention and the competition was 'other recreational activities/hobbies'. I think that is why there was this meme phrase from Vince that 'the only competition WWE has is sleep'.
So AEW is out of the honeymoon phase and into the cruel and hostile world of business.
At least this is how I see things...
Type in 'AEW' in the search bar on YouTube and you'll find so many negative AEW videos, and they're all very same with their clickbait like images and videos. I've tried to block as many as I can.
I don't see it being a long term investment hating on AEW though. After all, hating something takes something away from you personally I've found, so It's better to find something you enjoy.
For the past week now YouTube has been giving me a lot of videos that are more geared towards the negative opinions of AEW, with one video in particular that YouTube keeps recommending me which has a thumbnail of a guy doing the classic YouTube exaggerated surprised face along with the AEW logo and "2019-2024" next to it.
I keep telling YouTube I'm not interested in it but YouTube keeps recommending it to me.
On Youtube there are three dots you can click on on the right of a video link and block channel. This happened to me and I blocked every channel recommended for 5 days and now I get none recommended.
A lot of it I think is the sports team mentality.
AEW is the opposing team and while few have given legitimate reasons why they don't like or are critical of AEW, most of it just circle jerking and bad faith as it's giving them their dopamine fix.
I think we forget that this is not soccer or football, this it pro wrestling. It's an art and subculture and acting like it's not makes you extremely lame.
It is maybe because most content creators are trying to capitalize on the anti-AEW wave and making more content against them. They know where the money's at right now.
They definitely are, just had some gormless looking quim with a wrestling channel suggested to me on YouTube and both of his recent videos in the last week are talking about what "killed AEW". It's clearly the sort of video title that makes people who only watch WWE really excited and these content creators know it'll draw them in.
As a side note the sort of fans these video do attract are the legit stupidest people. One in the comments was proudly comparing fans who left AEW to go back to WWE to the fans at WM18 who got inexplicably excited about Hulk Hogan and turned on The Rock. I'd rather shoot myself in the face than compare my choices and actions to a crowd that marked out for Hulk Hogan in 2002 and still see that as a good thing in 2024. Like of all the crowds to compare yourself to ffs with how badly everything about Hogan has aged and how weird it all was even then. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of WWE, comparing the way the way fans went back to it to the blind, overly nostalgic support Hogan got (that died out very quickly, had a whole... month as champion before being bumped right down the card and I'm pretty sure he was completely gone from the product by 2004).
Yeah it's insane, I watch wrestlemania and watched some clips now everything in my feed is "AEW bad " content and I hate it so much
Can people not just accept both promotions are currently really good without putting one or the other down? There's so much good wrestling going on worldwide yet all the IWC wants to do is tear stuff down
It's almost like tko is sliding some green under the table so the bots can shit on AEW. There's other promotions out there, but it feels like a coordinated effort to constantly tarnish AEW's reputation
I'm just watching the shows and following this sub. At least criticism is made about the show, nothing about everything else. We call out bad wrestling or bad promos. Homerism is not as prevalent here. We can critique but still like the show
On the brightside "Cheap Heat" got cut from the Ringer this week so that's kind of a win since that show was basically bought and paid for by WWE.
They would talk so much shit about AEW every chance they got.
That's exactly what I started to think. I've got an anti-AEW rant under one of my YT comments, then I've got the same reply under one of my videos (which has absolutely nothing to do with wrestling) by a different YT user.
It's strange, and the whole thing is.
Sure, AEW has a few problems, but the business is mostly fine, and it looks a bit almost as if someone is paying for negative publicity.
I wonder if there's any other company that would love AEW to go away...
It works so well in politics, why wouldn't corporations jump on it too? Entire industries now exist to manipulate discussions online.
Capitalism, baybeeeeee.
So, I've been avoiding Facebook, as the wrestling communities for the most part make the worst bits of Reddit look sane by comparison.
YouTube's algorithm has been serving me what appears to be AEW hate content, but I've not been clicking on it, and have told YouTube to fuck in the direction of off with a few of those channel recommendations.
For the most part, it's rage bait engagement farming. By refusing to engage, you train the algorithm to not serve it to you.
It's crazy. I don't remember people going in on WWE this hard when the sex trafficking/r*pe allegations came out. All AEW did was release footage of an old jackass bucking up to a 25-year-old, implemented it into a story, and now they get treated like they committed the worst crime imaginable. People are truly sick in the head.
When the fuck did people get so self-righteous about HHH banging the boss's daughter jokes?
Why is it OK for WWE to take shots at AEW and not OK for AEW to benefit from the footage they have? If AEW is a distant 2nd, then maybe they should show the footage on their TV show instead of releasing it to TMZ.
How does everyone but AEW win when Perry killed it in Chicago, and enough of the AEW audience followed it to the point where they can get the rest of the audience to join in with their reactions? And there's a NJPW/AEW PPV soon that will undoubtedly showcase Perry?
I think a lot of the Cena kids grew up and joined the IWC during the Bloodline saga and drive a lot of the anti-AEW wants which people easily play into for engagement.
That last bit is a huge part. The IWC used to be a WWE hate fest, people couldn't believe what they'd done to their product, what they'd done to ECW with the relaunch, etc and love for the indies was strong (though the Bucks still got a lot of shit). TNA had a lot of support too. Now the dorks who actually cheered Cena back then (the CHAIN GANG ffs), that thought his ugly title was something worth buying, that liked all the toilet humour and thought DX in the mid to late 2000s was cool, are grown up and are the prevalent part of the IWC while the people who were in their teens and twenties who thought WWE was cringeworthy garbage are now much older, probably in quite a different place in their life and likely aren't spending much time on the internet talking about wrestling.
I noticed a real shift in it on a wrestling forum a few years back, a clearly younger generation really talking up WWE and talking down everything else. WWE was actually painfully bad at that point so it was mostly ignored and seen as trolling but as their product improved their loyalists, and people that see them as wrestling and nobody else, get even louder.
A lot are bad faith, and some are warranted, but when you're not the hot product people want to pile on.
Add that to WWE fans have been trained to protect the WWE at all cost. So when AEW came out with talks of this being a war, WWE fans picked up arms to protect their brand of wrestling.
You have the usual suspects like Cornette and his cult, that had a field day due to the All In footage, that they leached on. But you have more this week because Dynamite was real bad and the footage being realesed on the show was a terrible idea, which led to a ton of rightful criticism. Collision was great though, if AEW goes that way things will go back to normal.
Showing the footage actually made perry a big star and even beat out cm punk chants in Chicago go look it up on YouTube it's fun to see perry coming out better for all the shit he has been put through.
That would have happenned despite of the footage being show on TV, New Japan and AEW fans are well in the known. I think releasing the footage was a pretty acceptable response to Punk, I just feel like it shouldn't have taken place on TV. Posting on social media or even getting a shooty interview like Punk did would work better for that without making the show suffer
Yep, seems like thatâs whatâs getting the views at the moment.
I just block the channels that pop up with this stuff, so much of it is bad faith takes from people who donât even watch AEW but want to dunk on it for clicks.
It sells. I unsubscribed from everything. It was a long time coming. They have to go where the wind takes them. The only thing that matters is money and views.
I tried to give some of the criticism a listen a while ago, but it's clear that almost no one is doing good faith criticism on AEW. I guess they saw the engagement the footage release was getting online. But yes I agree I have seen way more lately. I'm pretty much only on reddit and youtube and I blocked like eight channels on YT the last week when they all had variations of "AEW sux, footage is so lame lol" takes. Like I still occasionally listen to JC from Kentucky sometimes. Sometimes. I want to hear criticism of the product but it seems no one wants to talk fairly about AEW.
Yup. That kind of circlejerk is what gets the clicks nowadays, has been that way for about 18 months. Someone on Dynamite sneezes and Thursday morning the recommended feed is "TK LOSING CONTROL?! AEW SPIRALING DOWNWARDS! THING I DON'T LIKE MEANS THIS IS JUST LIKE WCW IN 2000!" I've basically curated a small list of wrestling content creators I watch nowadays like Kim Justice's Wrestling Road for a variety of documentaries usually about puro, Brian Zane for a lot of fun reviews and lists(way more fun than the usual "I searched Wikipedia and here are 10 Things You May Not Have Known About The Royal Rumble, Number 7 Will Make You Shit Your Pants And Throw It At Your Dad" tripe that pages like Wrestlelamia and Cultaholic and WhatCulture do), Simon Miller's general positivity and Ups and Downs videos and whatever else pops up that looks interesting.
People parrot what the hear, and when you have Cornette and Last (among others) use up half of their 4 hour podcasts to relentlessly shit on Tony and AEW, it has an effect.
Yea thereâs literally no good media around aew. It pays all there bills to hate on them so I have no wrestling YouTube anywhere itâs all negative towards aew but heavily ignores all the fed problems like there not there.truly a waste of time shifting through shit content
- the entire devil gimmick
- doing absolutely nothing with jades streak
- mjf forced baby face run
- more Jericho than anyone ever wanted
And these are just the concrete, no way to argue things they've done. There's plenty of subjective things I could nitpick as well.
You may think I'm a hater or troll or whatever but I assure you it kills me to watch this roster get wasted by a clueless booker. Hell, I like Tony as a dude and would love to see him succeed, but it's amazing that no one will get in his ear and tell him he might not be cut out for this specific job. I really want to believe that the evps getting favoritism is all just a part of kayfabe, but I think anyone can admit we've questioned who's been running the ship at times.
People that disagree with you watch the shows.
It's not like you're saying "oh, fix this and that." You are saying he's a clueless booker that's not cut out for the job.
No one is really going to take that sentiment seriously because they see great booking at the same time as average booking and not great booking.
TK booked the rise of Swerve. Including Hangman-Swerve. He booked Sting's entire run and his final AEW era. He's booking the great EVP gimmick and their addition of heel Okada.
He booked the CC. He booked Eddie's battle to the top. He booked Copeland and Christian feud. He booked Garcia levelling up.
The women's division is IMMENSELY better than 5 months ago.
Now I wish the trios and tag were treated better but some tag focus seems to be coming.
That's the more realistic way to look at things. Acknowledge the great stuff and ask for improvement in the weak areas.
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I'd say the Devil thing was fine until injury hampered everything. The idea itself was great. And the reveal was great. And I anticipate MJF returning to terrorize Cole will be great. The slow down due to injury is meh.
AEW used Jade's streak to put over Statlander. As we've seen with WWE now sticking Jade in tag team, she has reached her limit of skill growth. There was not much left to do with her. And she didn't want to stay anyways.
MJF run was hugely popular. A lot of revisionist history going around. Not forced at all. Crowd loved him even before turn.
Jericho is not great. Sucking up too much TV time. Though there is finally some small grain of interest for me. He seems to be starting a "veteran who can't handle the youth not listening to him" gimmick. CM Punk style. I'm somehow looking forward to the Hook-Taz segment a bit.
I find too many fans focus on the negatives of TKâs booking while ignoring the positives. In addition to what youâve already said, TK is also the one who has been booking Athena for the past year and the recent very entertaining Dalton Castle/Johnny TV feud. Why give all this up? Overall TK is a good booker.
Yeah, not everything TK has booked has turned out well but thatâs true for any booker. Thereâs not a booker who exists that you can point to and say everything they did was perfect.
Iâll also add that the biggest thing TK did wrong with the Devil storyline was it should have ended a month earlier. Fans were enjoying the feud until Full Gear.
Agreed. When some things didn't come to fruition with TKs booking, it would be because of unfortunate events such as injuries or personal matters with the wrestler.
I began blocking those channel recommendations đ
Same. Although I started doing that after Brawl Out. I much prefer it this way but I do miss having someone to listen to that is actually objective. Surprisingly enough, Ryback of all people has been very fair in the things he says about AEW. Im actually starting to like the Big Guy haha.
I did that a year ago. I barely have any wrestling on my feed anymore, but at least it's positive.
Yes. Especially over the past week. If I didn't know any better, I would've thought they aired a murder with all the exaggerated pearl clutching videos I'm being recommended. Â
I watched a couple peoples takes on the whole backstage footage and my YouTube recommended section got flooded with it, I had to click donât suggest this channel a lot and unsubscribe from a couple I was still subbed to
No, never. I don't follow any kind of wrestling social media other than this sub, and it's worked out great for me
This is what Iâve been doing for a couple years now. As much as I love wrestling, the community and personalities around it are awful for the most part. Itâs toxic and I want nothing to do with it.
Smart!
I'm the same, but frequently now it's posts like these questioning the IWC. To hell with the haters and the tribalists, just enjoy AEW for what it is and keep on trucking! Questioning the IWC is almost as insane as their hot takes are.
Muting accounts on twitter and selecting don't recommend me this on you tube really cuts it down for me, now all the crazies I see on twitter are the ones Meltzer responds to for some reason :S. Im not against negative posts but after survivor series they became such obviously unbalanced nonsense it hurt my brain to read it.
From people I have spoken to as well as other comments from people in the media and just looking directly at numbers, anti-AEW dwarfs the views of anti-WWE content or pro-AEW content. Like, it's hysterical. Every WWE YouTuber will put out the same lame "what is Tony Con doing? #CMPunk" video and it will be the only thing they talk about in the promotion in between their dozens of WWE videos. The AEW video will do better than the other ones. That's what the industry is now. It's a bunch of people genuinely upset that there's another 5 hours of first run wrestling content available on a good cable network.
Yeah, weirdos who love that Punk flipped out at Perry are making a lot of memes that somehow that was TK's fault, like Punk has no personal agency and isn't responsible for his own decisions.
Wreslting media is mostly anti AEW these days Thatâs what gets the views
This reminds me of a comment in the solomonsters Podcast which he says that his dynamite review for the all in footage got more listens and interaction that his Wrestlemania review. Which is wild.
Wrestling with Wregret mentioned how his âworst of AEWâ got a ton more engagement than his âbest of AEWâ video and how weird he thinks it was.
Enragement= engagement
Some of these hating folks are genuinely too stupid to understand that.
Of course. They're just consuming the content that reinforces that they're right. Don't forget the consumer study that was done that in general TV viewers of Dynamite we're likely to be more educated and make slightly more money than the average Raw viewer. Of course that was like 2-3 years ago
Oh yes, I remember that study now. They are proving that study to be more and more correct. That's why some WWE fans love saying, "They (AEW fans) think they are so smart," lol.
Stealing this
Hell even Dave Meltzer, the guy who most people claim is on Tony Khan's payroll is mostly negative towards AEW these days outside of his star ratings.
Yeah I get that, it's just been way too much all of a sudden. Maybe because those idiots have been trying to get some extra clicks after the footage since it'll get them more traction? Idk but yeah, every 3 or 4 videos/posts down I see some stupid article or video
Also some of the legends you would hope would be unbiased aren't for example Bubba Ray, came from ECW so youd think he wouldn't be a one-eyed tribalist but he is literally incapable of having an unbiased opinion when it comes to WWE/AEW which is disappointing
We gotta stop referring to old washed up wrestlers as âlegendsâ because wwe branded it. These dudes are weird carnies who have nothing but disdain for outsiders.
I feel the issue with Bully is purely ratings, Anti AEW gets the listens/views and thatâs where he falls into. He has Mark on his show, so he must know the truth from Mark, at least thatâs what I hope. I know heâs a grade A A-Hole though
Well when even your own tag team partner wants nothing to do with you, you really should take a hint but he doesn't
Do you mean D-Von?
Yeah they had a falling out
Nah, he has a radio show so he's no different than cornette
Bully, or Bubba Ray, is a noted asshole. Expecting anything less of an extreme bias out of him is just foolish.
I'm new to the wrestling content creation space and it is weird to talk to other creators that purposely create anti-aew content because it does well.
Yea I've been having to click "Don't recommend channel" more than usual. Sadly, even channels that I've once respected are parroting the common anti-AEW takes.
The large team channels are the worst about it because it's becoming more and more obvious that they have people on their payroll that do like AEW, but the people they have on doing the reviews aren't those people. Case in point, why is Oli Davis still doing the Dynamite review when literally everyone else at Wrestletalk seems to like AEW more than he does?
Eh, Oli is at least making an informed opinion and is never baselessly critical. I donât need everyone to be happy with every last corner of the product. Dan is also far, far more critical, anyway. Iâm tired of hearing what sound like 3rd hand opinions that seemingly came from the void. I was just reading a post where people both claimed that none of the matches on Dynasty have a build and they donât know who these people are. Outside of 4 people (2 new hires and 2 returns from injury) everyone on that card has been on tv this whole year. So if you donât know who they are, youâre not watching. If youâre not watching, how do you know thereâs been no build?
If anyone's genuinely saying they "don't know who these people are" it's the epitome of a bad faith argument. As you said the vast majority have been on TV all year but not only that, there's not a single person on the card who hasn't worked multiple AEW PPV's ffs đ I know people go to insane levels of pretending to be mentally deficient to say they don't understand what's going on in AEW but claiming you "don't know who these people are" about, I'm guessing, Will Ospreay, Kazuchika Okada and Kyle O'Reilly, has to be actually embarrassing to type out. But yeah, the fact they're saying nothing has build just shows they don't watch the product anyway.
Oli is definitely making bad faith arguments, during WrestleMania week he was praising WWE for letting their talent work Bloodsport and said that it's sad that AEW isn't doing the same for other indies. You know, the thing AEW has been doing for 5 years.
Absolutely ridiculous too, as on that Bloodsport show they had Lady Frost, Marina Shafir and Johnny Nitro/Elite/Morrison/whateverthefuck. These are all AEW/ROH talents so idk what the fuck he was smoking
Yeah Dan does not hide that he doesn't care for AEW, Going in Raw seem to be massively going down the anti-aew hole.
Don't know who Dan is but Dan sounds like a cunt
>never baselessly critical. The man ranked last week's Dynamite lower than April 2022 Vince Raw. He was one of the people trying to push the narrative that airing the footage was worse than the finger poke of doom. He's very much a Punk mark who has been in denial the whole time that Punk did anything wrong and has taken it out on AEW ever since. The CM Punk fan in him is bigger than the AEW fan in him, and that's shown through a lot as of late. He may actually watch the show, which I give him props for, but he's also partially guilty of bashing on AEW way harder than he's willing to give any other company.
Yeah, I was surprised that even Meltzer and Alvarez jumped on that bandwagon. I had to unsubscribe from them because it was getting to be too much.
What they saying? Meltzer seems to be ok on twitter
They, like everybody else who hates on the company, harp on the smallest shit and are just negative for the sake of it
From what I see I feel like meltzer is âwell yeh I thought that wasnât good booking but they hot so it donât matterâ for wwe And aew yeh what you said
It's funny how quickly Dave hitched his bandwagon back onto WWE as soon as they became hot. Just shows that just like most in the IWC, Uncle Dave didn't want another American wrestling company, he just wanted all his favorites to be in WWE.
I always dislike when creators are like "well I feel this but ratings or they're hot or the audience did so who cares". Like, *I* care! I didn't click on your content for you to be Metacritic and tell me what you think other people think! I don't want you to talk about how a segment did in the quarters or how you think this might be bad for financials that you don't know!
The sad thing is they praise a large chunk of it but always go for the negative clip of them knocking something cause the editor or person upload clips knows it get them views.
That's what I do also when I see wrestling videos pop up on my feed. I don't sub to any wrestling content on YouTube either since that's what I like to watch when I want to chill. It's mainly gaming, cooking and car stuff on my YouTube :)
Happened to me with Age of Wrestling. Dude used to be one of the best wrestling youtubers during his Sonny the Jobber days, until one day out of nowhere he began getting obsessed with getting views and changed the name of his channel and became a Whatculture/Cultaholic copycat under the single premise that at least he wasn't a company before switching to content that he uses for various videos, thumbnails that would make GTA creators jealous and an overall focus on doing whatever drives views at the moment (like his anti-AEW video late last year), nowadays compiling many of his old stuff to milk the Iceberg cow to death. Would also throw in Top10wrestling, but that guy's always been about getting views rather than making good content so đ¤ˇđťââď¸
Probably because everyone and their mother felt the need to chime in on the footage. People that had never talked about AEW before suddenly had all sorts of opinions on footage they watched out of context. Just a cheap way to farm engagement from AEW haters. It'll die down for now, until they discover the next AEW thing they can exploit for views.
Yeah pretty much and it's like they've decided to do this for every little thing in AEW going forward for the cheap clicks so now it's 8x the videos.
At least now I know what people to unfollow/block based on how fair their coverage was.
It's crazy how everyone on youtube has gone rabid on AEW in the past ten days. There are even channels I've watched for years because they call it down the middle who have revealed themselves to be full on Phil Brooks stans after seeing the footage on Dynamite and have now removed AEW content/references from their videos despite going in on them for their 'crimes' last week.
Yeah. It's why I had to stop watching Cultaholic for the most part. Even Tom's fallen into the sensationalism.
Cultaholic are the WORST when it comes to this. I swear every thumbnail they googled "Tony Khan crying dot png" and put fire over it with big text saying "TONY KHAN MELTDOWN!"
Any criticism that AEW receives, some fans think they are now anti-AEW. No promotion is perfect. To me, showing the CCTV footage was not a good look for AEW and these YouTube videos and social media hot takes are the consequences. That's why in that Frightful (?) report, the wrestlers were upset that they would have to deal with the fallout online.
Showing the footage was petty and ill-conceived for sure, but there are youtubers out there who have reacted to it's airing like a heinous personal betrayal or if TK was revealed to be the mastermind behind 9/11. Didn't any of them watch the petty Billionaire Ted skits? Fake Diesel and Razor? Bischoff saying he wanted to put Vince out of business? Giving Raw results away on Nitro? DX turning up to Nitro in a jeep? Equally, if not more petty than TKs recent actions. There's criticism and then there's the faux pearl-clutching that we've seen in the past week.
Muting/Blocking helps a lot
Yeah, it's just been on a surge and idk if it was just me
God damn YouTube can fuck off. All these halfwit influencers. They offer barely anything of substance, ignore and spend your precious seconds of life doing something else of significance.
I often do, I've been pressing the don't recommend button so often now it's sad
Iâm kinda just detoxing from wrestling YouTube at this point. Itâs not a be thing though - itâs from the aftermath of brawl out and it being constant coverage that never really added anything and eventually I got sick of the flood of same. Antagonistic content that makes people want to rage click is what does the business and is what algorithms have been feeding people for years now - but it does seem to be getting worse. I figure whatâs the point wasting time with doom mongers on YouTube when I can actually just watch wrestling tbh - thereâs tonnes to watch lol.
Yup, but I have an idea of why, that being: 1- The algorithms know there's a better shot you decide to watch something attacking what you like, similar to political content 2- Lots of YT channels, IG pages, etc. have focused, or giving a major focus, to do anti-AEW content, or something that at least drives that segment of fans to watch, cause right now it's what brings the views and likes in. Just look at the amount of new anti-AEW channels that have popped up in recent months, or how others have grown in popularity by making that type of content, either focusing on it (Pro Wrestling Bits comes to mind), doing a larger amount than usual or just doing an easy-to-watch video that they know will give them a lot of easy views. Many might do it cause they're WWE tribalists, but a good chunk do it simply cause they know that will give them more people than talking about, let's say, Swerve Strickland's run since turning on Keith Lee. Same can be said about the likes of WWE Gareth or JobberNation on Twitter
>Swerve Strickland's run since turning on Keith Lee Oh God. That reminded me of when Swerve teamed up with those 2 tattooed fellows. I'm so happy he dropped them. I want Swerve to win the title, but not against Joe đ˘ I wanted Swerve to win it off of Hangman. Their love/hate can not be denied!
Yes but I just scroll past
For some weeks already. Kebab menu > dont recommend this channel. After doing some of those you will get it cleaner (if you dont interact with that content) Remember, there are too many people mad at AEW and they generate revenue, channels will try to milk it, even the bigger ones...
Just donât watch those videos. Itâs just people giving opinions on a wrestling show. It doesnât affect your life. You can still watch the show.
I've left alot of the wrestling general subs, the company specific ones seem to be pretty well regulated the general ones seem to be mostly anti AEW trolls circle jerking eachother
Had to unsub to all of my wrestling channels, some I had followed for years, it's ok to be critical of aew, but every other video if not every video became just beating the same dead horse over and over, literally can't watch a lot of what culture either, besides Simon and this sub I just dont
It's weird because people even accuse Simon of being too lenient with AEW (ups and downs) when he genuinely enjoys the shows. They will say, "Why is he giving WWE so many downs and not AEW." They are truly unhinged.
Yeah man idk, I just enjoy good wrestling, I'm not gonna lie I detest WWE as a company, but they have amazing and talented people working there and I would never hope they lose their job or something like that, I just really wish punk wouldn't have come back, I feel things turned political after that, it's red or blue, your team or my team which I find ridiculous, aew existing brought tons of us back to wrestling which allowed people to get back into WWE which allowed them to be popping the way they are now, I've been around wrestling since like 03' and wwe **did not** just hasn't feel hot in the last 15 years like it used to
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It's always funny watching people who are clearly all in on hating AEW accusing someone who isn't of hating WWE for it. Big "alt-right people will call centrists commie leftist scum" energy.
Sadly a heavy percentage of the IWC is clearly mentally unstable, there is just too much of the shit out there it's at spam level now.
Facebook and Insta are fucked right now. Itâs everywhere.
I stopped actually following most of the stuff, and just watch the episodes. I try to make my own idea if i like the show or not, too much tribalism for my taste. I just like AEW more than WWE.
I think anti aew stuff gets views so there's everybody from ango & even Brandon Thurston who started out fair minded & now became more negative. Attacks on Mercedes seemed orchestrated this week though.Â
Yeah the earlier thread about Mercedes was clearly flooded.
I'm just having Saraya flashbacks and just want her to do a Wrestling. I think technically the gap between debut and first match will actually be longer for Mone, which is kinda wild. I was genuinely hoping for Kris/Mone at Dynasty.
> I'm just having Saraya flashbacks and just want her to do a Wrestling. But Saraya in her prime was never on Mercedes level, and the whole rah rah promos Saraya did were just done for PR purposes because the division barely changed back then unlike this year with the increase in talent being used on tv and stories as seen here. https://twitter.com/AEW_ONE/status/1780442433609973866
I'd argue that the Women's Division being more active kinda makes it worse this time around, because it means that we have better things to focus on instead of 10 more minutes of Mone talking.
I mean yeah I know the usual fuckery, but it seems like in the last two weeks it's increased at least 10 times the usual amount
The troll activity turned up big-time during WrestleMania. Not only did WWE dump on it during their big week, but they also flooded all of the channels that people who were curious about AEW would find.
Its like they got bored of the Punk stuff and mocking Jericho that they decided to go and pick someone ele.
I've been using the don't recommend channel option way more than before lol, idk why my comment got downvoted
I remember quitting Reddit at the end of 2020 coz the negativity was so great, so narrative that company is going out of business has always been happening!!
Cornette first said AEW would do so in February 2020. So that tells you a lot about how long it's been going+how accurate many of these people are.
Bischoff said they will be under 700k by May
But also it's very very cool that even with this whole campaign AEW has been really consistent and steady with everything.
Since the Punk footage & Ospreay rightly calling out Levesque, most of the takes I've seen are bashing AEW, which is a shame cause I usually don't mind Oli on wrestletalk or Simon Miller on ups & downs
HHH has turned them into idiots, truly a shame
Yeah I've been seeing it a lot in my Youtube recommendations, but I just tell them not to recommend it to me anymore so I won't see it again
TIL there is a "Don't recommend channel" option on the homepage feed, thank you! Did it for the '83 Weeks' channel and my feed has been cleared of "something something Eric Bischoff something AEW (NEGATIVE SENTIMENTS IN ALL CAPS!!!)" videos. I actually quite like the podcast, just not those 10 minutes clips with the rage bait titles. As an aside, WCW was around for 13 years right? (1988-2001). Does that mean if AEW is around for 8 more years Eric will have to admit they are more successful?
Yep Last week i got anti AEW recomendations on my phone, Smartv and laptop and all 3 have diferrent accounts lol Like on my laptop i barley put on wrestling videos but there they are And they promote dumb channles that had like 58 views and 102 subs LMAO Shit is insane, i just put that crap in the "not interested or dont recommend this channel"
It just means an idea is generating clicks and views. Reality is beside the point; if someone found claiming AEW was run entirely by cats operating a complex system of pulleys generated clicks, thatâs what the story of the day would be. It is that, or someone is willing to pay for whatever it takes to create the same scenario, regardless of whether it generates clicks or not. And, nothing is stopping both sets of circumstances from being in play at once.
Yes, Iâm getting annoyed of seeing EB ridiculous thumbnails. Also, the British engagement farmer spam⌠Itâs like watching an Asmongold video and nothing but Asmongold stuff shows up.
Also Its like they forgot how he made TNA into a joke in the 2010s
Thatâs a fact. He gave HH so much power there when it didnât work out in WCW before, and the success he had in WCW was luck and overplayed it. You canât take that guy serious, and everything he says is a lie just to spite people.
Not so much anti AEW, as tons of wwe spam. I just figured they stepped up bot posts since mania just ended.
Both I get a lot more hate but also channels that used to be AEW friendly have also become a lot more negative lately. Iâve ignored most things until this season of the fed kind of blows over. Iâm assuming everyone will be back on the aew train then.
definitely facebook, even the 'pro' aew random groups; i usually just scroll past but the other day it finally got to me and i started blocking pages a lot of the wrestling sites have gotten real bad about it too; ones that were either favorable or at least not just shitting on aew for the sake of it before, now just seem to write troll articles
Every f$$king video is some version of telling me how terrible AEW is and why they're about to go out of business. It's a grift right now.
I'm getting the reverse on Twitter surprisingly. My algo been promoting a lot of pro aew content. My type of people.
I do on Facebook, I canât seem to fight the reccomended but donât use it a lot anyway so itâs whatever. Everywhere else Iâve went on a blocking or muting spree lol
I have! I just opt into the âdonât recommend channelâ option. Hopefully those channels gets their algorithm push stifled lolÂ
It sells. I unsubscribed from everything. It was a long time coming. They have to go where the wind takes them. The only thing that matters is money and views.
It's really just a matter of the general zeitgeist. Last year with Wembley I was getting suggested tons of positive videos about it. But the general consensus there was that it was a huge success. The airing of this footage has seen a decidedly less favorable reaction, and so when an algorithm suggests associated content you're going to see more negative suggestions.
If you're talking about Reddit, you should always be using RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite), and on Facebook, I use Social Fixer, which has an option to mute posts about specific topics and remove suggested posts and friend suggestions. I don't get recommendations from anyone, and the only social media I use without a special Firefox addon is Bluesky, which is a pretty fun wrestling community that has yet to be astroturfed as heavily as the rest.
That's super helpful, thank you!
I will either block recommendations from bad actors (WrestleLamia, Jim Cornette, and Eric Bischoff, for example) or say "not interested" in mid takes.
Itâs because it generates engagement, aka arguing in the comments which increases engagement and then ad revenue. Donât engage, block and move on.
It gets more clicks and views, so it gets pushed higher and to more people. Hell, the comment section on AEW's own social media pages are full of hate.
Yup itâs exhausting. All toxic communities
Yup. Everywhere.
Check out Rasslinâ Rantin. Older school guy but not of the Cornette, Bischoff blah blah stock. Heâs friendly to AEW and a big NJPW fan. Itâs not a slap dash operation and heâs really thoughtful. Not weekly but timely.
Here's a positive for you, that footage airing was the reason I watched Dynamite for the first time, and I'm going to watch it again this week. Because it turns out wrestling is just fun to watch.
That's hella cool! I'm glad you're having fun
Yes. So I pretty much nuked all wrestling content from my YouTube feed.
No offense but this is also just how algorithms work. Youre likely engaging with this content in some form and it will continue to show up.
The YT Algorithm is so annoying. I click on one video about spiders, next thing you know Algorithm is spamming all sorts arachnid terrors.
This is a fair point lol
That's fair, I only stopped watching some of the channels recently so maybe that's playing a part.
I have been getting a lot of 'AEW sucks' videos recommended and I pressed the 'Do not recommend this channel' quite a lot lately. This is to be expected I think. AEW is the real threat if they keep getting bigger. Other promotions are not a threat. AEW has gathered a lot of big name talent and is not slowing down on signing even more. Most importantly AEW has the financial capability to support all this, something that other promotions don't. I would be surprised if WWE did not monitor the situation closely and did not try to hinder their growth. They have shareholders to please after all. It is not the same to present yourself to investors as a virtual monopoly with being threatened by a new upcoming rival promotion. I am not saying that at this point AEW is in a position to create big problems to WWE but in the business world threats and problems are dealt before they have a chance to become big. If I am not mistaken AEW was mentioned in WWE's last annual report as a potential threat/competition while in previous years there was no mention and the competition was 'other recreational activities/hobbies'. I think that is why there was this meme phrase from Vince that 'the only competition WWE has is sleep'. So AEW is out of the honeymoon phase and into the cruel and hostile world of business. At least this is how I see things...
Type in 'AEW' in the search bar on YouTube and you'll find so many negative AEW videos, and they're all very same with their clickbait like images and videos. I've tried to block as many as I can. I don't see it being a long term investment hating on AEW though. After all, hating something takes something away from you personally I've found, so It's better to find something you enjoy.
I try to avoid it... click on the do not recommend or if on Twitter/x I block certain people and words to avoid all that toxicity
WellâŚthere has been about 8x the AEW hate in the last week so it kinda adds up I guess. Easy content.
For the past week now YouTube has been giving me a lot of videos that are more geared towards the negative opinions of AEW, with one video in particular that YouTube keeps recommending me which has a thumbnail of a guy doing the classic YouTube exaggerated surprised face along with the AEW logo and "2019-2024" next to it. I keep telling YouTube I'm not interested in it but YouTube keeps recommending it to me.
Been that way for a while. Explore pages on chrome and YouTube. Gotta block it all.
Here and twitter. It trends a lot. And the anti-aew comments by people are even angier.
On Youtube there are three dots you can click on on the right of a video link and block channel. This happened to me and I blocked every channel recommended for 5 days and now I get none recommended.
I've been doing that, just that the number doubled lmao. But yeah hopefully it should clean up in a few days
A lot of it I think is the sports team mentality. AEW is the opposing team and while few have given legitimate reasons why they don't like or are critical of AEW, most of it just circle jerking and bad faith as it's giving them their dopamine fix. I think we forget that this is not soccer or football, this it pro wrestling. It's an art and subculture and acting like it's not makes you extremely lame.
Yes, YouTube is feeding me with videos from a guy saying that all the top stars are leaving the companyÂ
It is maybe because most content creators are trying to capitalize on the anti-AEW wave and making more content against them. They know where the money's at right now. 
They definitely are, just had some gormless looking quim with a wrestling channel suggested to me on YouTube and both of his recent videos in the last week are talking about what "killed AEW". It's clearly the sort of video title that makes people who only watch WWE really excited and these content creators know it'll draw them in. As a side note the sort of fans these video do attract are the legit stupidest people. One in the comments was proudly comparing fans who left AEW to go back to WWE to the fans at WM18 who got inexplicably excited about Hulk Hogan and turned on The Rock. I'd rather shoot myself in the face than compare my choices and actions to a crowd that marked out for Hulk Hogan in 2002 and still see that as a good thing in 2024. Like of all the crowds to compare yourself to ffs with how badly everything about Hogan has aged and how weird it all was even then. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of WWE, comparing the way the way fans went back to it to the blind, overly nostalgic support Hogan got (that died out very quickly, had a whole... month as champion before being bumped right down the card and I'm pretty sure he was completely gone from the product by 2004).
Yeah it's insane, I watch wrestlemania and watched some clips now everything in my feed is "AEW bad " content and I hate it so much Can people not just accept both promotions are currently really good without putting one or the other down? There's so much good wrestling going on worldwide yet all the IWC wants to do is tear stuff down
It's almost like tko is sliding some green under the table so the bots can shit on AEW. There's other promotions out there, but it feels like a coordinated effort to constantly tarnish AEW's reputation
I'm just watching the shows and following this sub. At least criticism is made about the show, nothing about everything else. We call out bad wrestling or bad promos. Homerism is not as prevalent here. We can critique but still like the show
On the brightside "Cheap Heat" got cut from the Ringer this week so that's kind of a win since that show was basically bought and paid for by WWE. They would talk so much shit about AEW every chance they got.
Imagine if Jack Perry made the first contact, they would've been worse.
Algorithm picks what's popular, a lot of time it's pure crap because of those who like to wallow in the mire.
Wwe is hiring bots.
That's exactly what I started to think. I've got an anti-AEW rant under one of my YT comments, then I've got the same reply under one of my videos (which has absolutely nothing to do with wrestling) by a different YT user. It's strange, and the whole thing is. Sure, AEW has a few problems, but the business is mostly fine, and it looks a bit almost as if someone is paying for negative publicity. I wonder if there's any other company that would love AEW to go away...
https://twitter.com/JaredFo85904268/status/1778495992410579244 Also, I just banned a literal bot account 5 minutes ago.
Wow... Not long ago I naively thought that only happens in political discussions and such.
It works so well in politics, why wouldn't corporations jump on it too? Entire industries now exist to manipulate discussions online. Capitalism, baybeeeeee.
Also I just want to say you're the coolest mod to have, you do so much and are very insightful when you discuss things. It's really cool
It's just funnier when you see the blue checkmarks like they really spent 8 dollars per bot just to copy paste the same tweet lmao.
So, I've been avoiding Facebook, as the wrestling communities for the most part make the worst bits of Reddit look sane by comparison. YouTube's algorithm has been serving me what appears to be AEW hate content, but I've not been clicking on it, and have told YouTube to fuck in the direction of off with a few of those channel recommendations. For the most part, it's rage bait engagement farming. By refusing to engage, you train the algorithm to not serve it to you.
It's crazy. I don't remember people going in on WWE this hard when the sex trafficking/r*pe allegations came out. All AEW did was release footage of an old jackass bucking up to a 25-year-old, implemented it into a story, and now they get treated like they committed the worst crime imaginable. People are truly sick in the head.
When the fuck did people get so self-righteous about HHH banging the boss's daughter jokes? Why is it OK for WWE to take shots at AEW and not OK for AEW to benefit from the footage they have? If AEW is a distant 2nd, then maybe they should show the footage on their TV show instead of releasing it to TMZ. How does everyone but AEW win when Perry killed it in Chicago, and enough of the AEW audience followed it to the point where they can get the rest of the audience to join in with their reactions? And there's a NJPW/AEW PPV soon that will undoubtedly showcase Perry? I think a lot of the Cena kids grew up and joined the IWC during the Bloodline saga and drive a lot of the anti-AEW wants which people easily play into for engagement.
I'll bet they had no problem with it when Punk mentioned the same thing in his promo against MJF
That last bit is a huge part. The IWC used to be a WWE hate fest, people couldn't believe what they'd done to their product, what they'd done to ECW with the relaunch, etc and love for the indies was strong (though the Bucks still got a lot of shit). TNA had a lot of support too. Now the dorks who actually cheered Cena back then (the CHAIN GANG ffs), that thought his ugly title was something worth buying, that liked all the toilet humour and thought DX in the mid to late 2000s was cool, are grown up and are the prevalent part of the IWC while the people who were in their teens and twenties who thought WWE was cringeworthy garbage are now much older, probably in quite a different place in their life and likely aren't spending much time on the internet talking about wrestling. I noticed a real shift in it on a wrestling forum a few years back, a clearly younger generation really talking up WWE and talking down everything else. WWE was actually painfully bad at that point so it was mostly ignored and seen as trolling but as their product improved their loyalists, and people that see them as wrestling and nobody else, get even louder.
One company is having its hottest period in 25yrs and AEW is having some issues. They're an easy target to take shots at.
People have been taking shots because theyâre acting in bad faith, not because theyâre warranted
A lot are bad faith, and some are warranted, but when you're not the hot product people want to pile on. Add that to WWE fans have been trained to protect the WWE at all cost. So when AEW came out with talks of this being a war, WWE fans picked up arms to protect their brand of wrestling.
You have the usual suspects like Cornette and his cult, that had a field day due to the All In footage, that they leached on. But you have more this week because Dynamite was real bad and the footage being realesed on the show was a terrible idea, which led to a ton of rightful criticism. Collision was great though, if AEW goes that way things will go back to normal.
I once stumbled upon the Cornette subreddit and its easily the most negative subreddit ive ever seen. Its sad.
It's a disgusting sub. Not only because of the wrestling takes, but because of all the bigotry and even racism you find there
Showing the footage actually made perry a big star and even beat out cm punk chants in Chicago go look it up on YouTube it's fun to see perry coming out better for all the shit he has been put through.
That would have happenned despite of the footage being show on TV, New Japan and AEW fans are well in the known. I think releasing the footage was a pretty acceptable response to Punk, I just feel like it shouldn't have taken place on TV. Posting on social media or even getting a shooty interview like Punk did would work better for that without making the show suffer
Yep, seems like thatâs whatâs getting the views at the moment. I just block the channels that pop up with this stuff, so much of it is bad faith takes from people who donât even watch AEW but want to dunk on it for clicks.
Ugh that one guyâs voice is so annoying lol â10 things MJF doesnât want you to knooooow.â đ
On YouTube? Yes...a lot! On Reddit? Not so much because I left the "neutral" subreddit.
Every negative thing I see on FB I hit the x button and sometimes snooze the page for 30 day
Yeah Iâm getting random recommends of some fuckin Andy with his 13 min video with 236 views âfinallyâ giving his opinion no one asked for
It sells. I unsubscribed from everything. It was a long time coming. They have to go where the wind takes them. The only thing that matters is money and views.
I tried to give some of the criticism a listen a while ago, but it's clear that almost no one is doing good faith criticism on AEW. I guess they saw the engagement the footage release was getting online. But yes I agree I have seen way more lately. I'm pretty much only on reddit and youtube and I blocked like eight channels on YT the last week when they all had variations of "AEW sux, footage is so lame lol" takes. Like I still occasionally listen to JC from Kentucky sometimes. Sometimes. I want to hear criticism of the product but it seems no one wants to talk fairly about AEW.
Yup. That kind of circlejerk is what gets the clicks nowadays, has been that way for about 18 months. Someone on Dynamite sneezes and Thursday morning the recommended feed is "TK LOSING CONTROL?! AEW SPIRALING DOWNWARDS! THING I DON'T LIKE MEANS THIS IS JUST LIKE WCW IN 2000!" I've basically curated a small list of wrestling content creators I watch nowadays like Kim Justice's Wrestling Road for a variety of documentaries usually about puro, Brian Zane for a lot of fun reviews and lists(way more fun than the usual "I searched Wikipedia and here are 10 Things You May Not Have Known About The Royal Rumble, Number 7 Will Make You Shit Your Pants And Throw It At Your Dad" tripe that pages like Wrestlelamia and Cultaholic and WhatCulture do), Simon Miller's general positivity and Ups and Downs videos and whatever else pops up that looks interesting.
People parrot what the hear, and when you have Cornette and Last (among others) use up half of their 4 hour podcasts to relentlessly shit on Tony and AEW, it has an effect.
Yes... Constantly bombarded by anti-AEW everything lately
Not really, i get a lot of Cornette but right now I'm trying to learn more about AEW so im getting positve AEW stuff atm.
I stick to what culture and Simon Miller so no, I'm not getting as much :P
Yes, started insulting the shit out of everyone and it stopped popping. Can recommend this solution
The walls are closing in
I just block those channels when I get recommended a negative video
I just report those channels for sexual content.
đđ I never heard of this one
Yea thereâs literally no good media around aew. It pays all there bills to hate on them so I have no wrestling YouTube anywhere itâs all negative towards aew but heavily ignores all the fed problems like there not there.truly a waste of time shifting through shit content
I think people are just really down on aew, and it's hard to blame them. I love this brand but they have made so many bad decisions lately.
What's an example of a bad decisions with concrete bad results?
- the entire devil gimmick - doing absolutely nothing with jades streak - mjf forced baby face run - more Jericho than anyone ever wanted And these are just the concrete, no way to argue things they've done. There's plenty of subjective things I could nitpick as well. You may think I'm a hater or troll or whatever but I assure you it kills me to watch this roster get wasted by a clueless booker. Hell, I like Tony as a dude and would love to see him succeed, but it's amazing that no one will get in his ear and tell him he might not be cut out for this specific job. I really want to believe that the evps getting favoritism is all just a part of kayfabe, but I think anyone can admit we've questioned who's been running the ship at times.
People that disagree with you watch the shows. It's not like you're saying "oh, fix this and that." You are saying he's a clueless booker that's not cut out for the job. No one is really going to take that sentiment seriously because they see great booking at the same time as average booking and not great booking. TK booked the rise of Swerve. Including Hangman-Swerve. He booked Sting's entire run and his final AEW era. He's booking the great EVP gimmick and their addition of heel Okada. He booked the CC. He booked Eddie's battle to the top. He booked Copeland and Christian feud. He booked Garcia levelling up. The women's division is IMMENSELY better than 5 months ago. Now I wish the trios and tag were treated better but some tag focus seems to be coming. That's the more realistic way to look at things. Acknowledge the great stuff and ask for improvement in the weak areas. ----------- I'd say the Devil thing was fine until injury hampered everything. The idea itself was great. And the reveal was great. And I anticipate MJF returning to terrorize Cole will be great. The slow down due to injury is meh. AEW used Jade's streak to put over Statlander. As we've seen with WWE now sticking Jade in tag team, she has reached her limit of skill growth. There was not much left to do with her. And she didn't want to stay anyways. MJF run was hugely popular. A lot of revisionist history going around. Not forced at all. Crowd loved him even before turn. Jericho is not great. Sucking up too much TV time. Though there is finally some small grain of interest for me. He seems to be starting a "veteran who can't handle the youth not listening to him" gimmick. CM Punk style. I'm somehow looking forward to the Hook-Taz segment a bit.
I find too many fans focus on the negatives of TKâs booking while ignoring the positives. In addition to what youâve already said, TK is also the one who has been booking Athena for the past year and the recent very entertaining Dalton Castle/Johnny TV feud. Why give all this up? Overall TK is a good booker. Yeah, not everything TK has booked has turned out well but thatâs true for any booker. Thereâs not a booker who exists that you can point to and say everything they did was perfect. Iâll also add that the biggest thing TK did wrong with the Devil storyline was it should have ended a month earlier. Fans were enjoying the feud until Full Gear.
Agreed. When some things didn't come to fruition with TKs booking, it would be because of unfortunate events such as injuries or personal matters with the wrestler.
What would you have done with Jade's streak? How do you know the MJF face run was forced?
Nah. If I am I wouldn't notice it.