Conservative media personality Glenn Beck might have made a big mistake when he referred to World Wrestling Entertainment fans and performers as “stupid wrestling people.”
Beck has been bashing the wrestling organization lately in response to an on-camera storyline that Beck feels insults the Tea Party movement.
“I can take it from a lot of people,” Beck complained. “I can’t take it from the stupid wrestling people.”
Immediately resulting in a Twitter firestorm, Glenn Beck – despite having a tremendous following of his own – saw his name and image smoked by thousands of wrestling fans who defended their beloved WWE and unloaded a barrage of Facebook messages and Tweets blasting back at the talking head.
The WWE even responded by inviting Beck to appear on “Monday Night Raw” tonight.
“Beck references WWE as ‘stupid wrestling people,’ … WWE is giving Beck the opportunity to address our 14 million weekly viewers and our global fan base, as he believes we are offending our ‘conservative’ fans with this storyline,” the wrestling organization said on Friday.
Beck declined the invite, but given the pace at which he ran away from the WWE and its rabid fans, it’s clear that he may have been intimidated by the WWE’s formidable support system. The difference between Beck’s social media firepower and the WWE’s is like the difference between a bazooka and a cigarette lighter.
As of late 2012, WWE’s various talent accounts added up to more than 25 million Twitter followers and another 65 million Facebook likes. During WrestleMania 28 in April, 2012, over 110 individual terms related to the event trended on Twitter. The Wrestlemania Twitter hashtag itself was ‘tweeted’ over 600,000 times, potentially reaching some 130 million people.
Do you think Glenn Beck fumbled by insulting the WWE and then dodging an invite to explain himself?
