#3 ‘Fans’
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Now we’re really getting into the weirder parts of Vince-speak.
When was the last time you actually heard either the commentators or the wrestlers refer to you or anyone else watching as ‘fans’? It must’ve been a very long time because the alternative term ‘WWE Universe’ has been shoved so far down the fans throats for years.
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There doesn’t really appear to be any reason behind this weird term ban other than ‘let’s create something unique to WWE’. This appears to be part of a trend where influential people bestow a special term upon their fans to make them feel special in some way.
Beyonce has her ‘Beyhive’, the Insane Clown Posse has ‘Juggalos’, and WWE has ‘the WWE Universe’.
While there’s nothing inherently wrong with trying to distinguish your fanbase from another one, this term feels forced. It sounds really weird when WWE’s commentators are using the term to describe its fans, and feels horribly out of place when being used in a promo.
That wrestler/authority figure would be talking like a normal person, then all of a sudden, they mention the ‘WWE Universe’ by name and, bang, there goes the realism of the promo.
By forcing all of this Vince-speak into a promo, it emphasises the lack of realism in those promos. Look at John Cena. When he’s not cutting the WWE-approved kiddie promos and he’s talking like an ordinary person (or at least as close to ordinary as he can get), his promos are great.
But as soon as he starts throwing WWE catchphrases and using Vince’s twisted version of English, he turns into a corporate shill and his promo loses its impact.
If the whole point of cutting a promo is to sell an upcoming match, you want to make it seem as real as possible. Using such glaring corporate speak as ‘WWE Universe’ in order to make something trend on Twitter more is not the way to go about doing that.
