According to the sports statistics site Wrestlenomics, an average episode of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) receives well over one million U.S. viewers. People line up in the thousands for live matches, and other events by companies like All Elite Wrestling attract similar crowds.
At first glance, these matches are stunning displays of talent and practice, chances to observe skilled wrestlers think on their feet and work with their hands. But this couldn’t be further from the truth: wrestling is scripted, the moves rehearsed dozens of times before the show, every decision made months in advance by a shadowy director the audience will never see. So, why would anyone choose to watch a scripted sport instead of an actual competition?
These wrestlers represent the life we wish we were living, an experience of adventure and narrative. Human beings idolize the figures they see on TV as role models they wish to emulate. However, John Cena, Hulk Hogan, and The Rock are all acting, choosing lies as a lifestyle. So we choose, in imitation of them, to carry out lives of mistruth. We lie fluently as part of our day-to-day. As what is real becomes less important to us, however, our most dangerous surrender will not be of truth to each other, but to ourselves.
Two thousand years ago, Plato discerned the existential question for human beings: whether our mastery of the physical world will result in its subversion or its embrace. He modeled the human condition through the Allegory of the Cave, where people chained in front of a fire in an underground cave imagine the world through the shadows presented in front of them, the artificial representation of reality. If one man was freed and brought to the surface, he would see the light of the sun and realize the falseness of his past life, to which he was so beholden just moments before.
Most critical, however, is Plato’s understanding of this emancipation: it is only possible when forced. If the man’s chains were simply loosened, the light of the fire would blind him, and he would return to his version of reality; he would never leave the cave of his own volition. Anyone who tries to do so would be attacked, dragged into a cesspool of imitation and indirect living.
That’s what we see when our norms revolve around being glued to technology at all times of the day. Those who choose to live honest lives, without posting edited photographs on social media, are shunned and considered other. Society reshapes itself to accommodate communication through texts and videos, devoid of nuance or tone.
The French philosopher Guy Debord wrote that modern society has become based on spectacle, on representative shows of power instead of truly lived experiences. The popularity of scripted wrestling is just another symptom of a global sickness, where, as Debord writes in “The Society of the Spectacle”, “the true is a moment of the false.”
What we’re seeing now is the same shift that Debord diagnosed in 1967. People willingly choose to consume something they know is fake, giving up their own humanity and independence for a rush of dopamine.
In the era of ChatGPT essays and Instagram conversations, one’s humanity becomes a luxury, an odd, inscrutable practice mastered by a few mystics, a modern version of divination. People turn to entertainment like wrestling to distract themselves from the pains of modern living, but they don’t recognize the vicious circle of separation from humanity into which they’ve entered.
Instead, put down the newspaper—or, more likely, turn off the screen—and go outside. Pick up a basketball, go on a run, and play a game of catch with a friend or family member. You’ll be happier for it.
