The Important Impact Of Twitter On The Wrestling Business

 

Let's face it. Twitter is in its final stages. The logo and name have been been exchanged for an 'X' and millions of users are leaving the platform on a daily basis. According to the New York Times, Elon Musk's platform lost 59% of ad sales as of late. 

The functionality isn't what it used to be as the political extremes from both sides and a waves of bot-accounts tear apart what is left of the once beloved platform.

With Twitter dies probably the most important internet platform of the last decade for professional wrestling.

While Instagram and Facebook are prefered platform in some parts of the world and certain demographics, the first platform to further engagement and and drop news always has been Twitter when it comes to pro wrestling.

The market leader, WWE saw this trend quite early and began to push the platform with regular mentions on their weekly TV shows and even display the Twitter handles of their talent on screen whenever they get the chance.

In 2012 then WWE Champion CM Punk analysed the situation with Twitter quite well, calling out WWE during an interview for WrestleMania 28 for pushing 'the hashtags' down our throats.

But WWE would not be WWE if they would have stopped. This did not kill the trend, though. Twitter became the place to be for fans, talent and companies today.

Today most wrestling companies run a Twitter account to share information about there talent and to use it as a tool to hype up their storylines.

And that is not all. For fans it is probably the most direct way to engage with pro wrestlers and other talent. I also had some very important Twitter moments in the 14 years I have used it.

But: This has caused for the odd scandal here and there, which is then picked up by wrestling news sites, who also thrive off Twitter engangement and some even build their entire business around it.

It is an endless cycle of information and opinions being shared within seconds. Perfect for the opinion-strong and everychanging wrestling business. Unlike other platforms shared media is not the most important factor on the app. It is the thoughts members have on certain topics that often get the most engagement.

Twitter allows to be controversional and - atleast in the past - gave a fair chance of someone biting the bait.

Since Elon Musk's takeover especially, but even before, the culture of conversation has become increasingly stressful and harsh. Accounts like @FelixKohlenberg, @STRIGGA, @VintagePuro and @allan_cheapshot still hold up the ford with interesting wrestling trivia, mostly above and beyond the usual mainstream wrestling conversations.

Besides this current great effort, in the past Wrestling Twitter also had moments of great strength and courage. For example during the 'Speaking Out' movement, that helped to clean up the wrestling scene from unwanted difficult personell. Without Twitter it would have been much harder to keep this ball rolling.

But now, that the age of Twitter is most likely coming to a close sooner rather than later, what does the future hold?

'Real life conversations, pal' says the most logicial answer to that question. But not everyone in the wrestling scene does have the fortune to have the right person to talk to for the right topic in his inner circle. Often times fans are spead across all around the world and you want to catch everyone's attention and before we start dusting off the old wrestling forums we should see what else is available.

Facebook and Instagram still offer the most widespread reach. Mastodon, Reddit and Discord have proven to be helpful tools, but they do create boundaries due to splitting up their communities in different sections.

This leaves 'Threads' as the only credible contender to the Twitter throne. Mark Zuckerberg's newest project is basically a twitter clone, but less bad as the current Musk platform, now called 'X'.

Threads is currently not avaible in the EU and other parts of the world, but once that has been figured out, maybe Threads, with META's infrastructure behind it, does seem to be the best replacement for the wrestling community.

Who knows, Threads could also be full of limitations.

Whatever is next, the wrestling world still needs to be able to come together from time to time and since Elon Musk has decided to go one way, we need to go in another.  What do you think: Where lies the future of the pro wrestling industries biggest communication platform and where do we go from here?