Heh, I thought Hairy was going to be a workrate freak bitching about highspots.
Everybody generalizes. It is beyond human capability to catalog every unique variation on every situation and call it up when needed. The difference comes when relevant facts are discarded in favor of generalizations. Should we discard the fact that the average wrestling fan too often fits the stereotype? No. Should this mean that we judge someone by their chosen entertainment? No. However, I think it is a safe assumption that one will find a very few devotees of La commedia in the audience at a wrestling match. Anecdotal evidence ("Albert Einstein owned $4,000 worth of Stone Cold Steve Austin paraphenalia! John Milton alluded to Smackdown in Paradise Lost!) does not change the simple fact that wrestling’s fans are, on average, not rocket scientists.
And I thought it’d be a pro-Benoit, anti-Rock thread. 
Aside from NASA employees, what group of people, on average, are rocket scientists? 
I think what the people refuting the OP are trying to disprove is the idea that wrestling fans, on average, are dumb hicks. I have no evidence of course, not having polled all WWF fans, but I’d be willing to bet most fans are just average middle-class people, not necessarily any smarter or dumber than anyone else. leander mentions a study, but for results we are only told of the extremes on either end of the spectrum, not the average person.
I apologize if I have hurt anyone’s feelings because of this OP. My intention was to present an absurd, light-hearted topic in order to stimulate clever dialogue. I was foolish for not having anticipated that my question could end up sounding very offensive to many people. I know several intelligent and well educated WWF fans, so I knew the “real” answer to the question before I posted it.
Trucido, you are correct, people do stereotype. Unfortunatly, your theory was wrong. Do you have anything to backup your resoning? If you ever decide to to to http://www.otherarena.net or http://www.wrestlingclassics.com and go to the message boards there, you’ll find lawyers, business men, teachers and even former or current wrestlers sometimes.
Rather then unintelligent people, the WWF is marketed towards middle class males 18-35. (and of course, Hardygrrl). That is hardly the dumb white trash that gets associated with prowrestling.
While the basic storylines are done over and over, they have been done in every forum of art since anyone can remember, its because it works.
blur - Who thinks X-Pac is pretty damn good.
No one yet has tried to refute the OP. They’ve offered themselves, or friends, as examples of intelligent people who like professional wrestling. They haven’t addressed the fact that the fanbase is not middle-class, it’s lower class. Wrestling is pantomime violence and ridiculous posturing by steroid-addled men with freakish physiques and women ripped from Joe Trailerpark’s wet dream. Most wrestling fans are enamored of this fictional world, where it’s obvious who the bad guys are, and you address wrong by beating it with a folding chair until they go away. Entertainment should be beautiful, or brilliant, not some reversion to mindless primitivism. Despite what you may conclude from the preceeding, I don’t mind wrestling. If you want to watch it, fine by me. Do not, however, be surprised, when someone finds your chosen diversion prurient and offensive because of its base violence and screeching histrionics.
Ah, crap. Missed blur on preview there.
Might I suggest that the inhabitants of internet-based message boards are a very biased sample? Biased, say, towards income, and to some extent, education. And (oooh, this is gonna get me in trouble) literacy, perhaps? I will also say that, in my experience, wrestling fans are much younger than that, and generally blue collar.
How would you like it refuted? You have seen well rounded and educated people on this board respond to the OP. I gave you places you can go to find more well rounded educated people who enjoy prowrestling. Why don’t YOU show some proof that pro wresting is the arena of the uneducated. Because you can’t, thats why. You are just repeating the same thing over and over, with nothing to back it up. I’m sure you your world, everyone who listens to rap is a murdering gangster too. I know people are going to look down on pro wrestling as an entertainment choice, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit here and read complete falsehoods about something I enjoy and take it.
Upon preview, I see you added another post. While the message boards are the strongest cites I could use, they do give you a sampling. There are young and poor wrestling fans, but the shows are not geared towards them because frankly, they don’t have the money to spend. The business of wrestling into a big money venture because they stopped marketing to the younger, lower class who watched on TV but didn’t go to the live events. Again, its the middle class males 18-35 who have the expendable income to spend on the home videos and DVDs, or the monthy PPVs, or even cable to watch the shows.
Make that message boards are NOT the strongest cites.
Allow me to repeat myself again, blur. The well-educated people responding here represent the professional wrestling audience no more than the SDMB’s demographics represent humanity. Wrestling message boards don’t represent the fanbase either. They represent the fans wealthy enough to buy a computer, motivated enough to find the site, and literate enough to compose a post. Even if you can select 10,000 wrestling fans who are geniuses, that tells me absolutely nothing about the other three million. You’ve added another element of selection by choosing message boards. Samples are only deceptive when they’re not random, and these are a far cry from random.
All of that is irrelevant, though, to an attack on content. The content is lower class, and I’ll leave the reasons I’ve already stated for that.
You keep saying I’m only giving you a small sampling, but that is the only sampling I can give you right now. You have given me nothing other than your opinion. Your opinion is fine, but don’t present it as fact.
I’m sticking to my point that wrestling is marketed to the young working males with disposable income. Tickets for these events cost up to $500 a seat, how is that marketing to the lower class?
First, let me say I’m glad you’ve kept this polite. Perhaps I haven’t, but I’ll do my best to moderate my tone. I’ve already explained as well as I can why samples from message boards would be biased. We can’t draw any conclusions, aside from individual instances, one way or another. The only really good way to do it would be to select, say, 1,000 wrestling fans, totally at random, and find their ages, educational levels, and other interests. Then we could draw conclusions from the data. We can’t really even draw conclusions from those who just watch on TV, or just pay-per-view, or just attend events live. I will abandon as indefensible my claim that the majority of the audience is in the socioeconomic lower class, and do my best to find some decent demographic data.
What I will not abandon is that the themes of wrestling are generally lower class themes. They are crudely drawn with broad strokes, relying on large-scale stimulating raw, primitive emotions rather than finesse or emotional depth. There is no subtlety, and a great deal of catering to prurient interests. The themes are universally violent, repetitious, and, for lack of a better word, cheesy. I think people watch wrestling to be titillated. Intellectual stimulation is totally absent, and I speak for many when I say that the crude attempts to elicit primal emotions from the audience leave me rather cold. It’s posturing. Yes, as some will immediately say, what they do is physically difficult, but that’s not the same as a genuine competition- knowing that little factors can’t change the outcome takes away any excitement I might muster. I want my drama masterfully worked, carefully arranged to elicit genuine emotional response without resorting to such brute-force manipulation. Perhaps part of the problem here is that I haven’t specifically separated the idea of lower economic class, and low class as in lacking refined taste.
One of the legendary wrestlers in the WWF was George the Animal Steele. In the ring, he played the role of a dumb ape like character who chewed into turnbuckles. In real life, George the Animal Steele earned a Master’s degree in English literature.
Okay, I know HP apologized, but I’m still gonna tell Roland Barthes what he said.
Trucido, of course I’d keep it polite, even if we are in the pit, what good is insulting you? You have some good points, and I think the distinction between a lower class of entertainment and a lower economic class is getting blurred here. I agree that wrestling’s storylines are not the best, and the simple solution to all the worlds woes, according to wrestling, is violence. Continuity is a word not known by those who write wrestling these days. If you like your entertainment high brow, cool. I enjoy the finer arts just as much as wrestling. My opposition with the OP is that he assumes that just because one likes wrestling, they are uneducated and ignorant. That just isn’t the case.
leander, there is no way I’d compare the writing and acting in WWF to West Wing, or any of the hit shows. WWFs ratings are not anywhere close to the top 10, hell, at their best they were in the top 75 IIRC. With ratings like that, no wonder the WWF adds cost less. I do have to point out that Smackdown is one of the highest rated shows on its network, and RAW sets record ratings for TNN quite often. In fact, TNN changed its name and image when it signed on with the WWF.
Just how large is Roland Barthes, and is he on steriods?
I missed you appology earlier in the thread. No sweat man. Us wrestling fans get a little defensive sometimes.
Hey leander, where does that study that you quoted mention intelligence?
Your quote mentions the median age of a “Smackdown!” viewer being 23. It doesn’t mention the median age of the other programs. Are you surprised that people of that age, who in many cases are in their final year of school, or just entering the workforce for the first year are making $30K?
Well, No Shit. I don’t know about you, but I was making a lot less bank at 23 than I am now at 28.
Again, this relates to intelligence, how, exactly?