I personally think it's a brilliant move on the WWE's part. They're making their web site out to be almost just another news/rumor site and are treating the two (WWE the company and WWE.com the website) as separate entities. This is also working toward eliminating the "special" factor of Internet smarks. I mean, think about it: for a long time, we've been the "special" crowd, thinking we know it all and judging wrestling as if we owned WWE, or TNA, or Wrestling Itself.
What WWE is doing is basically making Internet fanhood a common thing. They're grooming all their "casual" and "mainstream" fans to look at the Internet as a source for wrestling news, starting with their rumor-mill-on-training-wheels, WWE.com. They're breeding a whole new breed of Internet fans, those trained by WWE to visit their web site and think of themselves as "smark". Hell, everybody knows that wrestling isn't really about inflicting damage and truly beating opponents...it's commonplace knowledge that wrestling is about athleticism and "show".
But now they're blurring the line between kayfabe and reality. I think it's a neat idea and I'm interested to see how it will play out. Insider terms like "work" and "shoot" being said on-air. References to backstage occurences that aren't part of the scripted storylines. It's all very intriguing to the average smark. I want to see what it'll do to the casual-fan-turned-wannabe-smark.
