Listening to last nights, WOR, Meltzer had a funny line when the word IWC was brought up:

 

"When people use the words IWC or smark, immediately [my reaction is] like, 'Okay, you're a dumb shit, I'm not reading anything you write.'"

 

Love it. Then again, I always thought the use of IWC and smark were dumb shit as well.

What in particular is Dave's (and Williams's) problem with the terms IWC and "smark"? Why does the use of these terms make you a dumb shit? Anyone care to explain?

I'd guess the amount of times Dave has read terrible posts on his own boards filled with the terms.

IWC is awful because it's usually accompanied by too much self-important discussion about what "we" think of a topic, as if everyone who has access to the Internet and is a fan of pro wrestling has the same opinion on everything related to wrestling. I've never read anything intelligent about wrestling that contained the term IWC.

 

"Smark" I think can be used ironically at times, but again, it's nauseating when it's used seriously to say things like, "That's the problem with you smarks. Always bitching about what you watch. If you don't like it, don't watch" or some other crap.

 

For the record, Dave has said the same thing about the term "mark", and he writes off people inside wrestling that use it, because it's meant to be derogatory.

 

I think the issue in both cases is generalizing.

I've never really been clear as to what "smark" actually means. The term in my mind conjures up exactly the sort of Scott Keith-influenced attitude from late 90s internet rant websites that we've been discussing. In fact, the term "IWC" makes me think of that specific period too. It's specifically when the Monday Night Wars were going and more and more people were coming onto AOL and so on with their 56k dial-ups.

 

I guess there was a time before that when jdw, Meltzer and Tim Berners-Lee were pinging each other snowflakes. Although I do prefer the image of Meltzer as being a guy who doesn't know how to use a computer and who still uses a typewriter.

I think IWC is a useful historical term for the Monday Night Wars era.

I don't particularly like IWC or smark, but someone needs to suggest alternative shorthand forms, because writing it out in longhand is a pain in the ass.

IWC is awful because it's usually accompanied by too much self-important discussion about what "we" think of a topic, as if everyone who has access to the Internet and is a fan of pro wrestling has the same opinion on everything related to wrestling. I've never read anything intelligent about wrestling that contained the term IWC.

 

"Smark" I think can be used ironically at times, but again, it's nauseating when it's used seriously to say things like, "That's the problem with you smarks. Always bitching about what you watch. If you don't like it, don't watch" or some other crap.

 

For the record, Dave has said the same thing about the term "mark", and he writes off people inside wrestling that use it, because it's meant to be derogatory.

 

I think the issue in both cases is generalizing.

 

IWC is a catch-all term for exactly what it is. The internet wrestling community. It doesn't imply that everyone shares a hive mindset......I actually find that it's the people who use it derogatorily and think people using the term are 'dumb shits' are the ones who stereotype "THE IWC" the most. Dave sounds particularly hypocritical on this when he's been ranting about dumb wrestlers (Brutus Magnus for example) ripping on "the dirtsheets" etc.......and you get the same sort of ranting from a lot of ex-wrestlers anout "dumb internet marks and the IWC and the sheets" and they also just come off as terribly uninformed

 

I mean ok, I'm not super big on labels either, but they serve a purpose. We could distill it down to "the pwo community" or "the DVDVR community" or the "F4W/WO community but there are huge overlaps in this tiny, niche online communities. The IWC simply mean the greater community of online wrestling fans. Is there a better shorthand term to use?

 

I mean, like the term or not, Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez are part of the IWC. So am I. So are you.

Re: Dave's dislike of the word "smark".....I recall him telling a story about an old school promoter (I want to say it was either Paul Boesch or Sam Muchnick) who would get really upset if he heard anyone in his promotion using the term "mark" since those people were the ones spending money on the show so everyone could get paid. Dave seemed to really take it to heart and ever since then I always got the sense that he sees the word "mark" and any derivative of it as kind of like the n-word for wrestling fans.

 

I mean, like the term or not, Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez are part of the IWC. So am I. So are you.

 

 

Everyone has the internet now. My 81 year old father today at lunch was talking about an article he saw on Jayski... so is he part of the INC (Internet NASCAR Community)? By this point we're what I've always said we were: Fans.

 

It's just jerking off at this point to go to the IWC toolbox.

"IWC" isn't the best expression these days but I think it clearly has meaning. I don't even think it means all wrestling fans actively using the internet to discuss pro wrestling though. It's just a dated but popular phrase for hardcore fans. There's a lot of variety there but we're generally all part of the same universe. PWO and Internet Smark Board #92 with all their differences are part of the "IWC" in a way that the fan who just uses the internet to follow wrestlers on twitter and maybe listen to one of the more popular podcasts by an established star like Austin or Jericho when they have a big time guest on aren't. It's not the easiest thing to properly delineate but in general I think we know what's being talked about when we see the phrase "IWC." I don't see a problem using popular phrases that I think most people have a good idea of the meaning of.

Agreed. Alternative expressions are cumbersome and it's self-explicit in its meaning. But everybody has their likes and dislikes. I cringe when people talk about Kings Road/Four Pillars/Four Kings of Heaven.

As do I with "control segment".

I enjoyed how much everyone was throwing around "respect for the BOYS IN THE BACK" in the early 2000s. Well not the enjoy part so much...

As do I with "control segment".

Oh man do I hate this phrase so much. I wish there was a way to make this stop. Just say "[X] got the heat," people.

I was looking at my own stuff on the board to see where and when I used control. I don't use it much. Fifteen posts out of my 4442 maybe. The main place I saw was when a babyface was using matwork/holds as a base for the first part of a match. They're not getting heat on anyone since they're the babyface, and it's usually a case where the heel should be more dominant (see Race vs Martel from Portland, where Bonnema even calls it "Control and Containment" while on the mic as he explained it really, really well, or something like the Killer Bees or Rogueaus vs Demolition) and are just held at bay by the babyface grabbing a bodypart and sitting on it.

 

Admittedly it's not the only time I use it (I see that I used it for limbwork that Goldust did to the Undertaker, but that's sort of the same idea. I think I occasionally use it subconsciously when i feel like the limbwork isn't going anywhere but is either killing time or is about just containing someone), but it's the main, by far.

Here's a vote against any further uses of rockets or strapping same to someone in line for a push

I split this off into its own thread.

 

Just a note to add that this is all in good fun. I don't want anyone to think these words/phrases are banned or anything like that. Some of these I don't even have a logical explanation for disliking. I just do.

To repeat, I think IWC is a very useful historical tool to describe things from the Monday Night War era, though of course even then it wasn't homogeneous, but it was much, much, much more so than it is today. I find it less useful in other usages.

I think it's the C in IWC that gets me. What, even in the Monday Night Wars era, made it a community? What was shared? There were still people online who only discussed old school stuff, or only discussed international wrestling. Then you just have your profiteers who I am convinced get no personal joy from professional wrestling like the people that were part of 1wrestling.com. Were they still in the IWC?

I think there were a large majority of everyone who felt pretty much the same about this stuff. Looking at Kunze's old posts sum it all up pretty well. Maybe it was "A" IWC and not "the" entirety of the internet or whatever, but I think it sums up 90% of the people I remember dealing with at the time. A major, major majority who would take a massive offense at the Vanilla Midgets comment and all that.

Understood. I know the type you are talking about. I think I identified with that at one point too.

To further clarify, it's not necessarily a literal term. The Republicans aren't necessarily more republican. The Democrats aren't necessarily more democratic. "Liberal" means something different in the States than it does in Europe. It's more of a political party from a certain time, or a cultural movement than an actual all-consuming Internet Wrestling Community, but it was a prevailing one in a lot of ways, and one that has legacy today. I think you can draw a fairly straight line between those people and a relative large and noisy minority today that complain about Dolph Ziggler being held down and Cena being terrible and what not. That becomes a bit more of a slippery slope because things are so broken up today relative to 1998.

Sports Entertainment and Diva bug the heck out of me. It's not sports entertainment, it's pro wrestling. they aren't sports entertainers, they are pro wrestlers. I don't care how often or for how long the WWE hype machine tries to get over the sports entertainment ideology, it just doesn't fly with me. Diva is a belittling and demeaning term, it shouldn't be used as a name for a women's wrestling division or for women wrestlers in general.

I don't like Sports Entertainment, but I can live with it. Sports Entertainer instead of Wrestler is worse than nails on a chalkboard to me and is one of the more off-putting "no one in the real world uses language like that" terms in current WWE Speak.