Dustin Rhodes has shared his issues with how social media has integrated into and changed pro wrestling.
Speaking with Inside The Ropes, Rhodes spoke on how social media has taken away not only from kayfabe but has also negatively impacted long-term storytelling in modern pro wrestling. He also stated how the use of social media guarantees WWE will never enter another Attitude Era.
“This business has changed so much. The Attitude Era of yesterday is never gonna come back because there’s too many kids involved. There’s too many parents. This world we live in now is so worried about everything, so if we do something wrong on TV, they’re gonna call us out on it, and they’re going to make a big public thing about it,” he said.
“Social media has done that too, also. I think if you take social media out of the equation—and I know sometimes change is bad, but sometimes change is good—and if you could just take social media away from the wrestling, to where they cannot comment about wrestling, I think wrestling would be a lot farther along than where it is right now,” Dustin argued. “Social media has kind of destroyed what we do, what we try to do out there. They’ve killed the storylines. They’ve killed the kayfabe.”
“If The Undertaker’s on Twitter, it feels weird to me,” he added. “It takes away the mystique of The Undertaker, the Deadman, right? If Goldust is on Twitter he needs to be talking like Goldust does in his promos. I don’t do that on Twitter.”
Rhodes then spoke highly of NXT Superstar The Velveteen Dream, pinpointing how Dream stays in character for his social media accounts and is a better storyteller because of it.