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For about 20 years now, wrestling personalities have attempted to connect with fans and use the internet to their advantage. At first, that came in the form of venues like AOL Live Chats, which is exactly what it sounds like and would’ve seemed incredibly cool and technologically advanced in the mid-to-late-1990s.
That said, technology wasn’t actually all that advanced at the time, so difficulties were bound to arise. Those difficulties notoriously came to a head when Vince McMahon himself was left alone in such a live chat with no fans able to interact with him in 1998.
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Here’s an excerpt from that session of Vince talking to himself under the screen name “WWFLive2,” as reported by The Pro-Wrestling Chronicle:
WWFLive2: I'm sitting in Bill Banks office with a cup of coffee in my hand that's cold, looking up at DX making some sort of gesture toward their crotch, what the hell is the matter with Bill Banks?WWFLive2: Oops, Bill just told me to suck it!WWFLive2: What does he mean by that?WWFLive2: Perhaps Monica can help us out!WWFLive2: And how about that Chris Rock anyhow.WWFLive2: Just like he said, Bill Clinton gave Monica a job, oh what the hell you can finish the rest.
From there, that developed to a point in time when each Superstar would have his or her own WWE-managed website, which would display in the “lower third” graphic as the wrestlers came to the ring. Can you imagine having to keep up with what each Superstar’s individual website was and making sure you were on the right one?
Now, of course, WWE has all that streamlined into its website, complete with an online shop to order merchandise any time. As for the wrestlers’ online personalities, that is honed through social media, most frequently Twitter and Facebook.
On the positive side, that has led to some really cool interactions, both with fans and other wrestlers. Cesaro and Sheamus have both held Facebook Live sessions while sitting ringside during a match, and Xavier Woods has developed quite a following for his video game musings on his YouTube channel, UpUpDownDown.
And we can’t forget glorious Twitter exchanges between Kevin Owens and just about anyone, including Goldberg.
On the flipside, WWE has seen negatives from Superstars being on social media. In 2015, Seth Rollins’ then-fiancee notoriously posted nude pictures of Seth and Zahra Schreiber, who was then a WWE developmental talent, to Seth’s Twitter account right as an episode of Monday Night RAW was starting.
More recently, announcer and backstage interviewer, Tom Phillips, got caught up in a somewhat similar scandal. Allegedly, he was cheating on his fiancee with another woman, even sending her messages that she made public on social media when she discovered he was engaged.
While some might argue that these incidents show the dangers of social media, they would seem more to indicate that cheaters eventually get caught.
