I was paying my bi-monthly visit to 1wrestlesuck.com yesterday, on my desperate search for a Raw play-by-play since my college doesn't have Spike and both Rajah/Torch weren't loading for me, and I came across, of all things, a Terri Runnels radio interview recap. Just to kill a few seconds, and since I wasn't having any luck finding a play-by-play, I thought I'd give it a quick read, not expecting to find anything interesting at all. Then I happened upon this particular section:

Terri's "old school" mentality shows more as she rants about the internet and how it has hurt the business. Shame on those people who open their mouths and shouldn't. If it was more like the entertainment business where journalists and critics reported more on the real-life things that the wrestlers did outside of wrestling, it would be okay, but why fans would want to know spoilers and what happened before shows air is what she doesn't understand.

The underlined part is the part that I'm focusing on. Most net fans would dismiss this comment as typical criticism of net fans by somebody who actually used to work for WWE. But, thankfully, I am not most net fans. And that particular part really got me thinking. Why do fans want to know what's going to happen before it actually does?

Think about it. Since wrestling is compared to soap operas so often, let's use that comparison here. If you were a soap opera fan, would you really want to know what's going to happen everytime you watch an episode? What would be the purpose? You'd never be surprised, never be on the edge of your seat. Wrestling is the same way. What exactly is so great about knowing what's going to happen ahead of time?

I haven't read Smackdown spoilers in years. I don't see the purpose. Especially now with the brand split, so that the guys on SD are only on SD. Why would I want to always know exactly what the guys I like on SD are going to be doing before I watch the actual show? Part of the enjoyment of watching wrestling is the spontaneity of things. Yes, parts of the show, as net cynics love to stress, can be highly predictable. But not everything on the show is. Ever. And it's always fun predicting the outcomes of big PPV matches and TV main events, but who the hell would actually want to know the winner of certain big matches before it happens? Anybody that read the spoilers before the Angle/Brock Iron Man match on Smackdown months back should've been dragged away and shot for being an imbecile. Why would you want to kill the match for yourself like that? Not knowing the outcome is half the fun.

When Matt Hardy made his "surprise" debut on Raw a few months ago, the spoiler for it was all over the internet before Raw began. I didn't click on it and read it, but certain friends of mine did. So when it actually happened (and I was home at the time and able to watch it live on TV), I was very pleasantly surprised when he came out. Guess who got more enjoyment out of that segment? I guarantee it wasn't the people who read about it before they saw it. Maybe it's just me, but I actually enjoy being surprised when I watch a show *shrug*.

Spoilers are like a sickness. The people that own these sites that post them are just showing off their "insiderness" or whatever the hell you wanna call it, by putting them up in the first place. "Gee, look, I know what's gonna happen on Raw tonight because one of my SOURCES told me. Click here to ruin the surprise for yourself like I already have!" You've really gotta wonder just how much enjoyment the net writers themselves get out of the shows, considering they seem to always know what's going to to go down. And of course there are a lot of people on the net without a thing called "willpower", who actually wouldn't look at certain spoilers but just can't stop themselves from clicking the accursed link. Like alcoholics and Screwjob Syndrome sufferers, these poor people need rehab. They need to be chained down to a computer with a link to a spoiler on the screen, with the mouse kept just barely out of reach- for 24 hours.

My personal theory is that net fans who willingly click spoilers like to read them because knowing what's going to happen in advance is an affirmation of their being "in the know". They like to be able to boast that they "knew in advance" about certain huge angles taking place the night before, to their buddies in middle school the next morning. It's like they have to constantly remind themselves that the shows are worked, so they need to be able to say "HA! YEP! I KNEW that was going to happen because my idol DAVE SCHERER posted it earlier! WOOOOOOO." Like these morons are predicting the future or something. Oh yes, it's so impressive that you knew that Wrestler A would beat Wrestler B. Wow. Do you look up Simpsons spoilers before new episodes air, too?