>>11411132Honestly if AEW haven't realised by now that behind the scenes is the new kayfabe, they need to.
Casual fans have dropped off massively for ALL of wrestling, but middle-income hardcore soibois are up in number. That's why even with TV ratings so much lower than 20 or even 10 years ago, WWE and AEW can both get good gates -Statpadded and papered or not, nobody outside of WWE with a stacked card gets that many people in Wembley, 20+yrs ago, because that hardcore market domestic & overseas is a bigger proportion than before, and those hardcores will spend their money on ANYTHING if you bait them.
But hardcores means they know its. a work and care most about, in order:
>whos the 'best worker' (easy to work them on this, because it means they care about match results)> whos "nice IRL" / "a dick IRL" (easy to work them on if you pay off dirtsheets to rope them into the meta narrative, even easier if youre a private company so dont have to be as open about contracts, network talks (including fake firings etc. that you run by them), hiring/firing etc. because no shareholders)> MOVEZ (hard to work, directly undermines match legitimacy, can be used to help work #1 but usually not worth anything besides yummy twitter clips)> LAYERED DEEP STORYTELLING (easy to work. Just repeat or re-use stuff slightly diffferently, reference old shit, fans will think it's all 'callbacks' and write the story themselves and make up shit to cover for your gaps).Smart fans are much easier to work than casuals because they desperately WANT to part with their money for the show. Casuals don't and say "prove to me why I should pay for this". Yeah hardcores are more autistic and demanding so you gotta pander more in terms of style but they're easy to fool because they ultimately never quit for good, and they're generally childless funko poppers who have no concept of saving money and no dependents to care for so can pour all their disposable cash into your shit.
