I’m on a major wrestling kick in my (not much of these days) free time, in the middle of downloading all WWF and ECW television from 1983 to 2007 and all WCW Nitro and Thunders from 1995 to 2001, and all PPVs from all three companies. I can’t find WWF Superstars from 1996 or 1997 but everything else is available on Soulseek. I was planning on watching from January 1996, when Steve Austin debuted in the WWF, to the night after WrestleMania 2003, when he wrestled his last match, but realized that the “modern WWF” really began in May 1995 when they switched from five PPVs a year to twelve, which fundamentally changed the structure of wrestling television from slow-paced, quarterly feuds to a monthly narrative cycle. Then when downloading 1995 WWF I found a guy with the complete TV from ‘83 to ‘95 that’s still being downloaded right now. Thank God for an eight-terabyte hard drive that’s getting this shit downloaded to it, and a 26TB hard drive it’s all getting backed up to.

I’ve watched all of 1996, then 1995, and now I’m at the end of April, 1997. Talk about whiplash – 1996 was a transitional year from the kid-centered, family-friendly wrestling of the mid ’90s to the very much adult product of 1997. It was fairly restrained until WrestleMania 13 in March, when Austin officially turned from a villainous hellraiser to an antihero hellraiser and holy shit did they strap a rocket to him. He’s in a feud right now with Bret Hart that will consume most of the year where the Canadian Hart is leading his family and wrestling fans “around the world” against bloodthirsty amoral American wrestling fans as everything that’s wrong with the world, and I just finished the April 21st episode which was a real humdinger. This is an iconic early Stone Cold moment, when he attacks Bret Hart in the ambulance:

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Realistic violence, profanity – the USA Network still censor middle fingers, but they seem to have given up on trying to censor “ass” and other profanity after a long and valiant effort – and other edginess abound. The crowd has shifted almost entirely in the ten months since the Stone Cold character started to develop from being mostly kids in the front row to almost totally adults; in fact, if you had any idea how the WWF had shifted in that less-than-a-year I’d say you were an outright irresponsible parent if you brought a little kid to a WWF event, though that didn’t stop toothless dads and moms with mullets in “Austin 3:16” shirts from hauling along their ankle-biters.

I’m going to finish 1997, then go back to 1994 and then 1998, when the Attitude Era really kicks into high gear with the Austin/McMahon feud: starting in November 1997 with Bret Hart’s controversial WWF ouster, it really gets going. It had been a slow transition from kiddy 1995 through 1996, with darker themes and characters and a somewhat edgier feel compared to the cartoonish comic-book wrestling that had prevailed up to that point, but around WrestleMania 1997 (in March) it hit critical mass and all of a sudden it’s like a light switch flipped. Austin fully took center stage and for the next decade it’s tits and violence and chaos, oh my, until Chris Benoit did what he did and WWE overreacted and got safe and kiddy again. But for that glorious decade, I was at the perfect age for wrestling: a kid in 1995, a preteen in 1996-97, when the transition was picking up, and finally a teenager for the full Attitude Era, which was the best age to be for that product.

I know you were watching for a year or so in there. When was that? Do you remember Sunny? She debuted in 1995 as manager of the Bodydonnas before she overshadowed all of the teams she managed because she was hot, though in 1997 they were at a loss as to what to do with her because she had no talent other than being hot so they had her model merchandise and take swimsuit photos and do short-lived commentary, among other things. She’s now doing over a decade in prison for a vehicular homicide from her double-digit-th DUI – after wrestling her life took a sharp turn for the worse. Speaking of this, I really should look for 1 Night in China, Chyna’s first porno with the Mechaclit. I’m sure it’s on Soulseek.

But I’m going to keep watching wrestling, one year forward and one year backward, until I get sick of it, which shouldn’t take too long. The show has gotten a lot more exciting in 1997 with Steve Austin as a chaos agent and Vince McMahon really leaning into the character – he had to; they had almost gone out of business in their 1995-96 nadir, and the crowds were really responsive to Stone Cold – but the quality of the wrestling has dropped off a cliff in the last month as sports has taken a backseat to entertainment, and it wouldn’t recover until 2000. This is a Very Good Thing: Stone Cold couldn’t sustain the promotion for much longer than he did, until a new generation of stars started to emerge and really solidify things in ‘98. The Rock proved a much sounder… rock to build the corporate monopoly on than the lightning-in-a-bottle Austin that always seemed a heartbeat away from burning up and hot entirely. When he left for neck surgery in November 1999, the company was firmly ahead in the Monday Night Wars with WCW, never to relinquish its hold, with the Rock and Triple H ready to take the lead in the promotion.

I finished Dragon Quest 2 about three months ago and I haven’t played a video game since getting my fill of The Magic of Scheherezade for NES. Next on my list is the Final Fantasy Tactics remake. In video games, as in wrestling, I’m stuck in the late ’90s.

Speaking of the ’90s, and because you said here or somewhere else something to the effect of “fuck the internet”, I was actually thinking about that a bit and I’ve come to the conclusion that it comes down to selective memory and, crucially, media amplification of Gen Z’s nostalgia for a 1990s era they never lived through. Was it better in some ways? Sure. But whereas I can download every WWF, WCW, and ECW show across two or three decades in 2026 by simply queuing them up and letting them download for a month over high-speed internet, in 2000 when I was watching the Attitude Era in real time you were limited to what was on television and what was available at the video-rental place, which had about two dozen tapes. Now you can binge-watch spring-1997 WWF, or compare them against the other two late ’90s promotions if you want, as well as watch any other WWE show from the 2000s or 2010s, and then today, if you want. I don’t watch WWE because to get everything you need a cable package, Netflix, ESPN’s streaming service, Peacock, and perhaps an over-the-air antenna if you don’t get The CW, but for not much effort you can download any wrestling show from anywhere in the world for free the next day and watch it on your own time. Also, current WWE kind of sucks.

Let’s be honest: landline phones sucked. Ten years ago, you had to sit at your computer for porn and pay $29.95 for a Segpay subscription to a commercial site if you wanted anything better than ten-second video clips from a TGP. Now you can go to XVideos and download all the porn you could ever want for the cost of an internet subscription or data plan. In the ’90s, gay rights were practically nonexistent, crowds chanted “you’re a faggot” at Goldust, and you could get lynched if you looked at another man the wrong way. The religious right still ruled half of the Republican Party and you could get raided for smoking weed at college. Today is better in just about every conceivable way except for things like Donald Trump, but the baseline is better.

Social media does indeed suck, and when Gen Z bitch and moan about “the internet” that’s usually what they mean – but that’s all they do about it; they’re too weak to put their money where their mouth is. I cancelled my Washington Post subscription and deactivated my Facebook account after the inauguration and don’t miss them. I wish that the youth would man up instead of just complaining about toxic online culture and cancel their accounts and subscriptions. You don’t need them. The internet and your phone are tools: you’re the master of the tool, not the other way around. I might just not understand because somehow I’m able to treat the internet like most people are able to treat alcohol and I don’t “get” phone addiction the same way I don’t get gambling. But I do know that the more time you spend on the internet, the more miserable you are, and the more time you spend smoking weed, the happier you are.