This. Is. Sickos Club.
Ok…
The internet is like…not the funnest place to be lately. Or…actually probably the last 10 years. I can get in to some big dissertation about why but I already have a podcast for that. In short, fandoms are a mess. In fairness, pro wrestling fandom has ALWAYS been a mess.
People will compare today’s social media climate to the message board era of wrestling. The problem with that? Both are shitty, toxic death holes of smug, sarcastic people who are most likely just incredibly lonely. Gatekeepers. Know it alls. Bootlickers. Fuck. It shouldn’t be a mystery that these people are lonely. I don’t want to hang out with that.
Meanwhile, the pro wrestling “media” (that is a generous term) is almost entirely focused on SEO, views, and clicks and generally fail to provide any new information or a single original thought. It feels like most are simply aggregating Fightful or Pro Wrestling Observer. There are exceptions but just a few. If there’s anything original on most of them, it’s some rage bait article designed to infuriate half the fan base and get shared around social media.
So to recap: we have fans gatekeeping new fans, rooting for promotions to fail, and arguing about ticket sale, ratings, and other things that are impossibly boring to talk about unless you’re a pro wrestling promoter. Then we’ve got “news” sites basically doing a quick copy/paste on news that is broken by others who are writing editorials simply designed to provoke anger and generate clicks.
So…how is any of that fun?
Pro wrestling is the best. There’s no other entertainment on Earth that’s anywhere near as cool. I don’t want to watch REAL fights. Fuck UFC. If I wanted to watch horrible men beat the shit out of each other I’d just go to any bar in my hometown. Fuck that. I want the flair, the spectacle of two people dressed to the nines in garish athletic wear doing all the flips, kicks, punches, and talking all the shit. Then I want to watch them bleed and scream in to a microphone with all the passion they can muster.
I want to talk about it with my friends who also watch it. I want to know what the pro wrestling girlies and enbys think too, not just a bunch of fragile dudes on the brink of admitting absolute defeat in life. There’s too many of those already.
Pro wrestling is EXCITING. Let’s get excited together. Any gender, race, orientation, income level, it doesn’t matter. Let’s mark the fuck together!
That’s what Sickos Club is for. Every week we’re going to write our hearts out. We’ve got multiple podcasts where we discuss our feelings and we share your feedback too. We’ve got insanely talented visual artists making amazing work that you can get lost in.
We are CELEBRATING wrestling…and we’re criticizing when the need arises but we do it as adults. We’re allowed to disagree, it doesn’t make anyone stupid or wrong. This shit is subjective. No yum yucking here. But even in that disagreement, we treat each other with respect. We’re grown enough not to fuck with shitty people.
Today is Day 1 of at least four years of extreme uncertainty and relative darkness in America. Chaos. And not the fun kind.
How do we counter chaos? With community, Friends. I don’t need my wrestling talk to resemble anything like our hyper-polarized political situation. I need a place to have fun and feel alive.
