Triple H And Shawn Michaels Discuss Social Media’s Impact On WWE
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Triple H and Shawn Michaels recently appeared on Inside The Ropes. The duo discussed social media’s impact on WWE’s creative process and how fans behave differently now. Triple H said that fans are much more expressive, which makes it more difficult to create heels and faces.
“Everybody has an opinion,” said Triple H. “Everybody has an opinion, but you can’t dictate now, so, like, you’re gonna create a character that everybody’s supposed to dislike, but there’s a large portion of them that are gonna like that. And then when you make somebody that they’re supposed to like, there’s a large portion of them that are gonna dislike that. And if you tried hard to flip them, and I know everybody’s gonna make the Roman thing of this, but there’s something to all that. But that’s a more difficult thing probably now than it’s ever been in this business to come up with a universal one or the other.”
Triple H and Michaels said that this effect holds true for fans in sports and other forms of entertainment. Triple H specifically brought up the music industry. “Same with music, too,” said Triple H. “Artists put out an album now, and you go through the social media when the album comes out, and it’s like, ‘Greatest thing ever,’ ‘absolute crap, complete garbage,’ ‘greatest music of all time,’ like, it just…[laughs.]”
Michaels said that, when you’re the one who’s making the content, you don’t necessarily care if the fans love or hate it. “It’s okay if you get on social media, and you say that it’s absolute garbage because that means at least you purchased the album to listen to it, to find out, to make your decision it’s absolute garbage,” said Michaels. “After you purchase the album we’re good. You know what I mean? Whatever decision you want to come up with after that, knock your socks off.”
Triple H said that he loves the fans’ passion, whether the crowd is cheering or booing. “I think sometimes fans think it’s something that we hate or something,” said Triple H. “It’s funny, sometimes I see the internet talk about us manipulating crowd noises. We don’t manipulate the crowd noises. You know, on live stuff, where they think like, ‘Oh and then they turned down the volume because this guy was getting booed and they didn’t want him getting booed.’ No, we didn’t. It’s just what’s happening right, it just is. But they’re so passionate about it, but the fact that, we love the fact that they can express their opinion. We love the fact that they can go out there and say, ‘This is great,’ ‘This isn’t great,’ ‘This guy’s a good guy,’ ‘That person’s a bad guy,’ whatever that is, right, and yet, if they also, if they tell us they dislike something, if we’re smart, we listen to that. Might take a while but we can fix it.”
Finally, Michaels said it’s better to see fans showing some engagement rather than watching them give up entirely. “I’d be more worried if you weren’t engaged, if you didn’t have an opinion,” said Michaels. “Whether you do get tired of it or not, what’s gonna really suck is the day when nobody cares, when nobody wants a picture, when nobody wants an autograph. So, no matter how much, better to have that ‘hassle’ than no hassle at all, and I think that’s how all of us in this line of work look at it. Any kind of engagement, good, bad or otherwise, is better than no engagement at all.”
The full clip is available here: