It's funny, I think older generations of wrestlers had far less respect for wrestling and it's fans than the current generation, but they were also the ones that were always like "Just listen to the crowd and do more of what they like and less of what they don't".

If you treat wrestling as simply as a money-making venture, as most of the older guys did, then your personal opinion of the quality of work doesn't matter. All that matters is if fans are willing to pay money to watch whatever you're currently doing, whether you love or hate it.

Now, if you treat wrestling (Or music, writing, art, anything) as a purely creative pursuit, the opposite is true. Now it doesn't matter what anyone thinks of your work EXCEPT you. If everyone hates it but you love it and you're doing it just because you enjoy it? Fuck everyone.

The problem is I think a lot of this generation is trying to simultaneously treat wrestling as a personally fulfilling creative outlet AND a money making venture. Which is possible but hard! Sometimes fans aren't going to like stuff you like, and vice versa!

It just creates these weird WWE star moments though where they're like "Fans are spoiled, fans are never satisfied, etc" but at the same time, they work for a company that is solely based around maximizing profits, not creative expression.

Like, if you inceptioned Vince into thinking that three hours of cloud farts would make him a trillionaire, you can bet Doink would return on Monday, eating beans. Vince doesn't care about what's on TV as long as you pay.

I'm rambling, but my point remains: if you want to treat something as both a business and a creative passion, sometimes you can have it both ways, but sometimes you've just got to accept that the thing you like doing the most isn't always a thing your customers will like the most

Radio funny man Tom Scharpling had a great piece of advice once that I've never forgotten, which is everyone should have one thing in their life that is just for them. Something where you're beholden to no one and can do with it whatever you want.

I think most of us spend a lot of our lives where the things we do for money and the things we do for fun are pretty separate. We do jobs we don't like but then come home and do some dumb podcast where no one can tell us what to do and it doesn't matter if everyone else hates it.

Meanwhile, wrestlers have it all mixed together. They're like "I'M ALL ABOUT WORKIN' THE MIZARKS AT THE MERCH TABLE TO MAKE THAT PAPER" but they're also vanity searching Twitter after every match and blocking everyone that didn't like it. It's gotta be tough.

There are some pretty big names in wrestling who have liked tweets I've made about their matches (Sometimes genuinely, sometimes passive-aggressively) and it's less than an hour after their match. That's how much importance some wrestlers today give your opinion.

There is a wrestler, I won't say who, but they had just worked the biggest show of their career, by far. And all of a sudden they like a comment I made about their match like 20 minutes later. They basically went through the curtain, took a shower, and then hit Twitter.

I honestly don't know if that is a good or a bad thing. I guess it depends on the wrestler.

I can't believe I typed "cloud farts" instead of "clown farts". This whole thing is ruined.