Thank you, Ethan. I feel pure disgust once again for what I'll call the Be Kind Left. They preach being kind, but if you're an inch to the right of them, they hate you.
Also, they've been amusingly painting Ozzy Osborne as a beautiful perfect soul while dancing on Hogan's grave. Is there nothing these cretins won't turn into culture war?
They are also inconsistent. They will dance on the grave of Hogan, who is Republican, for his racial comments.. but other celebrities like Howard Stern, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon who all did wildly offensive comedy skits wearing black face.. or even Eminem who has had some of the most over the top hateful homophobic lyrics in music history, they all get a pass and are celebrated because they bow down to the woke left and democratic Hollywood party. I don't think any of these people should be forever demonized. Times and social norms change, people make mistakes, they learn, they grow, they change. It's hard to be perfect if you are a public figure for over 20 or 30 years. But it's just nerve wracking how the social media mob of wokesters carry on like this.
Worse yet, many of those dancing joyously have not been harmed or negatively impacted by Hulk. If anything, neutral or positive memories from wrestling, movies, commercials, his work with make a wish, and children in hospitals.
Lefties on chatBCC came out w force to rest in piss hogan and declare his life of deserving of hell.
Imagine if everybody in the world had the worst or most offensive comment or joke you made in your life was secretly recorded and then broadcast and uploaded to the Internet for everybody to see, and this was your main legacy for the rest of your life until you pass away. All these wrestling fans hate Hogan but they love other wrestling stars like Ric Flair and Steve Austin, are you going to really tell me that those guys who grew up or spent much of their life in the south never uttered a racial comment?? I think if you take any pro athlete or wrestler or entertainer, I'm sure 100% of them have said or done things at some point in their life that if it was ever found out they would be cancelled.
They didn’t back stab their coworkers, Hulk is more than just the racist comment, he killed the Union; got Jesse Ventura fired who was his friend and prevented those wrestlers from being able to get better compensation and benefits just to make an extra buck.
That was just business and politics, Hulk Hogan did not own the WWF. He did not owe anything to the other wrestlers. Hulk Hogan was the top guy in a rapidly growing company and was protecting his position in the most cutthroat, backstabbing, dishonest, scumbag filled industry other than maybe the porn industry. Many of the other wrestlers would have done the same or even worse. I'm not saying Hogan is a super honorable man or a saint. I just don't think he should be crucified for life for being involved in wrestling politics in the 80s and 90s when that era was filled with dozens or even hundreds of other wrestlers who did worse than him. I don't think you could even be a wrestling fan if you had such a high moral code for how pro wrestlers should conduct business back then.
Just like no one owes him grace. I’m not the moral police and I think you’re allowed to say and do whatever you want and people can judge you for that. Vince loves Hulk and made him rich, others can think he’s scum. That’s life, the finger waging at peoples feelings towards someone is just what the left does to, both parties pick and chose when they want to be the moral standard, it’s just a weapon now
I think the point and title of the article was Grave Dancing is Bad. Which means it's just not a good look as a society if we CELEBRATE people dying and laugh and cheer at their deaths based on bad business deals or an offensive comment many years ago. You can have opinions and you are not obligated to celebrate anybody's life after they die. But if someone is ok or participates in grave dancing then their character is just as questionable or even more so than the person they are celebrating dying.
Look at history, we have been dancing on graves since the beginning on time with public executions. It’s human nature, is it ugly? Yeah but lots of things about humans are in fact ugly. So while you feel it’s nasty and unwarranted, other don’t and it’s ok
"Humans have been killing and raping for millennium. Is it ugly? Yes, but lots of human behavior is ugly. While you feel it's nasty, others don't and it's ok"
Unions are not automatically good as they can lead to the collapse of a business or industry.
The dock workers union choosing labor over technology will lead men maimed or killed that would not have occurred updating docks with modern tech.
The writers union catalyzed the collapse of Hollywood.
The teachers union helped destroy inner city public schools.
Yes, good examples exist too! This is why requiring someone to believe in your assumption to share dialogue is wild. It is designed to locate virtue signalers and disregard others who do not share the assumption.
Every professional sports organizations have unions, why am I suppose to believe wwe would collapse bc the workers weren’t contractors? Then the business is poorly ran and not the employees fault
Ventura wasn't fired over the union blowup; Ventura left over image licensing royalties several years after the union blowup which he took Vince McMahon to court over and won.
Thank you for linking to the tweet by SciBabe. It reminded me of why I grew to despise Gawker. Nothing in it acknowledges that Deadspin itself lit the fire.
I agree with Ethan on grave dancing. It's always felt icky to me. It's not hard to show some humanity and just not say anything if you truly detested the person.
To quote Donne:
"And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
The vitriol towards Hogan from modern day wrestling fans is fairly deranged considering how relatively innocuous his sins are relative to his compatriots in the wrestling business.
There are numerous very notable people in wrestling who are killers, rapists, child/wife abusers, violent locker room bullies, dangerously unsafe workers, embezzlers, lifelong hard drug users and people whose treatment of women in general is heinous. Many of the wrestlers whose causes are taken up by the IWC against Hogan have been credibly accused if not conclusively proven to have conducted themselves as legitimately terrible human beings. Shawn Michaels spent the better part of a decade as a sociopathic drug addict who made an active, and often successful, effort to destroy multiple careers in the WWF purely out of spite (in the grand scheme of things not all that terrible when you consider many of the people in the business) and he doesn't receive 1/10 of the hate Hogan does.
Hogan's main sins as defined by what is most often brought up are using regrettable language in private conversations as well as being particularly canny and ruthless in holding onto his top spot for two decades to the objections of other big wrestling stars and their fans not to mention his sub-par "work rate" and lack of high-starred matches as determined by Dave Meltzer types. In recent years it's popular to bring up the union business with Ventura from WM2, but there seems to be a number of conflicting stories about the viability and popularity of Ventura's actions at that time in the locker room and the former issues are brought up far more often.
…is it from modern day wrestling fans or is it from a smallish cohort that argues about play fighting on the internet?
Anyway, I agree. I don’t know much about wrestling, but on the occasion a death of an older wrestler makes it through the obituary is always like “Ol’ Boy Hughes got into wrestling after being released from a two month prison stint for killing his first wife. He made his bones in the Texas territory, where he moonlighted as the Grand Dragon of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. He is survived by his 6th wife, Shirley, whom he met at a show when she was 13….”
Wrestling is like a lot of things post-mass culture. It attracts a particular audience looking to be catered to and they drive the product with relatively few casual fans, certainly nothing like during the mid-80s and late-90s boom periods when it was a transcendent cultural phenomenon.
I’m sure there is a cohort of hyper invested adults who argue online and from whom you can suck a disproportionate amount of money from. Disney makes a killing charging these folks obscene amounts for backstage access at mediocre resorts. You can’t get a $9 billion valuation by being dependent on these people. And TKO, whose audience overlaps very much with Trump’s base, acquired WWE because there were audience synergies….like a McMahon is even a Cabinet Secretary….
People have been dancing on graves since the beginning of time. We had people clapping at hangings, we just don’t want to admit that it’s apart of being human, hate is a strong feeling. You’re more than welcome to think you’re above it but at the end of the day, you can blame social media but it’s a tale as old of time
Couldn't agree more. You live for 70 years and you're probably going to say and do some things you look back on and regret. I know I have. I never celebrate death. Even a guy like OJ. I did not celebrate his death like so many people did. He, like everyone, deserves grace.
When I die I hope I did well enough by the people I love that they will commemorate me, and did enough to the people I rather dislike to where they will dance on my grave—in my death may they reveal to the world how strongly I ethered them during my life.
I'd imagine people grave-danced since Day 1. Social Media just gave a platform to do it publicly. So while I don't think it's a good look, I think it's human nature. As a side note, AI tools are going to make background checks much easier. And it's no longer NFL draft picks that have to fear old tweets being scrubbed... so actions may have more consequences going forward.
But I am endlessly fascinated by the Peter Thiel and Aron D'Souza puppeteering here. It's a can of worms that leaves you wondering how much of the world is fueled by the "dark arts".
To demonize another person, we first have to self-canonize, right? I loved Hulk Hogan the wrestler. I don't know who he was a private citizen beyond the gossip. I'll assume he was like the rest of us: a complicated mess.
Meh. Didn't mind the grave dancing in this case. I don't like when it's done to revisit things that weren't main discussion topics during a person's final years.
Like for example Ozzy Osbourne -- now I'm about to do the thing I say I don't like -- if people decided to mention his past actions during the middle of the news of his passing I would disagree with that. That's not a current topic anyone is discussing, you're only bringing it up now because he died. That's messed up.
But in the case of Hulk Hogan. These are discussions that were occuring up until his death. I agree that social media does rush to point out all of the bad things someone did decades ago to try and scold you for feeling bad about a family's loss. But in this specific case I understand it. This is just continuing an active discussion.
To be fair, SciBabe is not who I would consider a significant figure in the Gawker Media Extended Universe. She had a cup of coffee as a columnist. She was a freelancer and she wasn't in the newsroom. If you look at the actual principals in the matter aside from AJ — John Cook, Max Read, Sam Biddle, Owen Thomas, the Dark Lord Balthazar — none of them posted anything yesterday. Defector's piece is actually fairly measured. Wonder why. Did they have a change of heart? Have they all quit X or the media biz?
There needs to be a Simmons-style title for when an icon of pure Americana reaches a level where foreigners find that person synonymous with the USA. When I've traveled abroad and run into someone who doesn't know English, certain names inevitably get rifled off when I tell them I'm American. John Wayne, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Beyonce, and especially now with Donald Trump. Hulk Hogan was on that list and personified the "I'm awesome, fuck you" American attitude ideal to foreigners. He is, for better or for worse, what others see in America.
This blog is turning into "zero-reporting takes on a single unpopular tweet discussed by other contrarian Substackers" at an astonishing rate. It's almost like he's getting captured by his audience, or he doesn't have any sources anymore.
Thank you, Ethan. I feel pure disgust once again for what I'll call the Be Kind Left. They preach being kind, but if you're an inch to the right of them, they hate you.
Also, they've been amusingly painting Ozzy Osborne as a beautiful perfect soul while dancing on Hogan's grave. Is there nothing these cretins won't turn into culture war?
They are also inconsistent. They will dance on the grave of Hogan, who is Republican, for his racial comments.. but other celebrities like Howard Stern, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon who all did wildly offensive comedy skits wearing black face.. or even Eminem who has had some of the most over the top hateful homophobic lyrics in music history, they all get a pass and are celebrated because they bow down to the woke left and democratic Hollywood party. I don't think any of these people should be forever demonized. Times and social norms change, people make mistakes, they learn, they grow, they change. It's hard to be perfect if you are a public figure for over 20 or 30 years. But it's just nerve wracking how the social media mob of wokesters carry on like this.
Worse yet, many of those dancing joyously have not been harmed or negatively impacted by Hulk. If anything, neutral or positive memories from wrestling, movies, commercials, his work with make a wish, and children in hospitals.
Lefties on chatBCC came out w force to rest in piss hogan and declare his life of deserving of hell.
Imagine if everybody in the world had the worst or most offensive comment or joke you made in your life was secretly recorded and then broadcast and uploaded to the Internet for everybody to see, and this was your main legacy for the rest of your life until you pass away. All these wrestling fans hate Hogan but they love other wrestling stars like Ric Flair and Steve Austin, are you going to really tell me that those guys who grew up or spent much of their life in the south never uttered a racial comment?? I think if you take any pro athlete or wrestler or entertainer, I'm sure 100% of them have said or done things at some point in their life that if it was ever found out they would be cancelled.
"The locker room is racist, sexist, and homophobic, and it's fun and I miss it." -- Charles Barkley
They didn’t back stab their coworkers, Hulk is more than just the racist comment, he killed the Union; got Jesse Ventura fired who was his friend and prevented those wrestlers from being able to get better compensation and benefits just to make an extra buck.
That was just business and politics, Hulk Hogan did not own the WWF. He did not owe anything to the other wrestlers. Hulk Hogan was the top guy in a rapidly growing company and was protecting his position in the most cutthroat, backstabbing, dishonest, scumbag filled industry other than maybe the porn industry. Many of the other wrestlers would have done the same or even worse. I'm not saying Hogan is a super honorable man or a saint. I just don't think he should be crucified for life for being involved in wrestling politics in the 80s and 90s when that era was filled with dozens or even hundreds of other wrestlers who did worse than him. I don't think you could even be a wrestling fan if you had such a high moral code for how pro wrestlers should conduct business back then.
Just like no one owes him grace. I’m not the moral police and I think you’re allowed to say and do whatever you want and people can judge you for that. Vince loves Hulk and made him rich, others can think he’s scum. That’s life, the finger waging at peoples feelings towards someone is just what the left does to, both parties pick and chose when they want to be the moral standard, it’s just a weapon now
I think the point and title of the article was Grave Dancing is Bad. Which means it's just not a good look as a society if we CELEBRATE people dying and laugh and cheer at their deaths based on bad business deals or an offensive comment many years ago. You can have opinions and you are not obligated to celebrate anybody's life after they die. But if someone is ok or participates in grave dancing then their character is just as questionable or even more so than the person they are celebrating dying.
Look at history, we have been dancing on graves since the beginning on time with public executions. It’s human nature, is it ugly? Yeah but lots of things about humans are in fact ugly. So while you feel it’s nasty and unwarranted, other don’t and it’s ok
"Humans have been killing and raping for millennium. Is it ugly? Yes, but lots of human behavior is ugly. While you feel it's nasty, others don't and it's ok"
Strong point pal
Unions are not automatically good as they can lead to the collapse of a business or industry.
The dock workers union choosing labor over technology will lead men maimed or killed that would not have occurred updating docks with modern tech.
The writers union catalyzed the collapse of Hollywood.
The teachers union helped destroy inner city public schools.
Yes, good examples exist too! This is why requiring someone to believe in your assumption to share dialogue is wild. It is designed to locate virtue signalers and disregard others who do not share the assumption.
Every professional sports organizations have unions, why am I suppose to believe wwe would collapse bc the workers weren’t contractors? Then the business is poorly ran and not the employees fault
Ventura wasn't fired over the union blowup; Ventura left over image licensing royalties several years after the union blowup which he took Vince McMahon to court over and won.
Exactly. Why lie about this?
Thank you for linking to the tweet by SciBabe. It reminded me of why I grew to despise Gawker. Nothing in it acknowledges that Deadspin itself lit the fire.
I agree with Ethan on grave dancing. It's always felt icky to me. It's not hard to show some humanity and just not say anything if you truly detested the person.
To quote Donne:
"And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee."
The vitriol towards Hogan from modern day wrestling fans is fairly deranged considering how relatively innocuous his sins are relative to his compatriots in the wrestling business.
There are numerous very notable people in wrestling who are killers, rapists, child/wife abusers, violent locker room bullies, dangerously unsafe workers, embezzlers, lifelong hard drug users and people whose treatment of women in general is heinous. Many of the wrestlers whose causes are taken up by the IWC against Hogan have been credibly accused if not conclusively proven to have conducted themselves as legitimately terrible human beings. Shawn Michaels spent the better part of a decade as a sociopathic drug addict who made an active, and often successful, effort to destroy multiple careers in the WWF purely out of spite (in the grand scheme of things not all that terrible when you consider many of the people in the business) and he doesn't receive 1/10 of the hate Hogan does.
Hogan's main sins as defined by what is most often brought up are using regrettable language in private conversations as well as being particularly canny and ruthless in holding onto his top spot for two decades to the objections of other big wrestling stars and their fans not to mention his sub-par "work rate" and lack of high-starred matches as determined by Dave Meltzer types. In recent years it's popular to bring up the union business with Ventura from WM2, but there seems to be a number of conflicting stories about the viability and popularity of Ventura's actions at that time in the locker room and the former issues are brought up far more often.
…is it from modern day wrestling fans or is it from a smallish cohort that argues about play fighting on the internet?
Anyway, I agree. I don’t know much about wrestling, but on the occasion a death of an older wrestler makes it through the obituary is always like “Ol’ Boy Hughes got into wrestling after being released from a two month prison stint for killing his first wife. He made his bones in the Texas territory, where he moonlighted as the Grand Dragon of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. He is survived by his 6th wife, Shirley, whom he met at a show when she was 13….”
There's very little distinction between those two groups in 2025.
I can’t believe that’s true, TKO I do know about, if that was true the acquisition would not have happened.
Wrestling is like a lot of things post-mass culture. It attracts a particular audience looking to be catered to and they drive the product with relatively few casual fans, certainly nothing like during the mid-80s and late-90s boom periods when it was a transcendent cultural phenomenon.
I’m sure there is a cohort of hyper invested adults who argue online and from whom you can suck a disproportionate amount of money from. Disney makes a killing charging these folks obscene amounts for backstage access at mediocre resorts. You can’t get a $9 billion valuation by being dependent on these people. And TKO, whose audience overlaps very much with Trump’s base, acquired WWE because there were audience synergies….like a McMahon is even a Cabinet Secretary….
People have been dancing on graves since the beginning of time. We had people clapping at hangings, we just don’t want to admit that it’s apart of being human, hate is a strong feeling. You’re more than welcome to think you’re above it but at the end of the day, you can blame social media but it’s a tale as old of time
Couldn't agree more. You live for 70 years and you're probably going to say and do some things you look back on and regret. I know I have. I never celebrate death. Even a guy like OJ. I did not celebrate his death like so many people did. He, like everyone, deserves grace.
When I die I hope I did well enough by the people I love that they will commemorate me, and did enough to the people I rather dislike to where they will dance on my grave—in my death may they reveal to the world how strongly I ethered them during my life.
So, I kinda disagree.
I'd imagine people grave-danced since Day 1. Social Media just gave a platform to do it publicly. So while I don't think it's a good look, I think it's human nature. As a side note, AI tools are going to make background checks much easier. And it's no longer NFL draft picks that have to fear old tweets being scrubbed... so actions may have more consequences going forward.
But I am endlessly fascinated by the Peter Thiel and Aron D'Souza puppeteering here. It's a can of worms that leaves you wondering how much of the world is fueled by the "dark arts".
To demonize another person, we first have to self-canonize, right? I loved Hulk Hogan the wrestler. I don't know who he was a private citizen beyond the gossip. I'll assume he was like the rest of us: a complicated mess.
Meh. Didn't mind the grave dancing in this case. I don't like when it's done to revisit things that weren't main discussion topics during a person's final years.
Like for example Ozzy Osbourne -- now I'm about to do the thing I say I don't like -- if people decided to mention his past actions during the middle of the news of his passing I would disagree with that. That's not a current topic anyone is discussing, you're only bringing it up now because he died. That's messed up.
But in the case of Hulk Hogan. These are discussions that were occuring up until his death. I agree that social media does rush to point out all of the bad things someone did decades ago to try and scold you for feeling bad about a family's loss. But in this specific case I understand it. This is just continuing an active discussion.
The morality of online discourse seems to be on an asymptotic trajectory to the inevitable: No morality at all.
To be fair, SciBabe is not who I would consider a significant figure in the Gawker Media Extended Universe. She had a cup of coffee as a columnist. She was a freelancer and she wasn't in the newsroom. If you look at the actual principals in the matter aside from AJ — John Cook, Max Read, Sam Biddle, Owen Thomas, the Dark Lord Balthazar — none of them posted anything yesterday. Defector's piece is actually fairly measured. Wonder why. Did they have a change of heart? Have they all quit X or the media biz?
There needs to be a Simmons-style title for when an icon of pure Americana reaches a level where foreigners find that person synonymous with the USA. When I've traveled abroad and run into someone who doesn't know English, certain names inevitably get rifled off when I tell them I'm American. John Wayne, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Beyonce, and especially now with Donald Trump. Hulk Hogan was on that list and personified the "I'm awesome, fuck you" American attitude ideal to foreigners. He is, for better or for worse, what others see in America.
Hebdomas mirabilis. What a week of posts here at HoS. Ambit? Ineffability of charisma? Beautiful.
Is this real or is it one person just saying stuff online into the void?
This blog is turning into "zero-reporting takes on a single unpopular tweet discussed by other contrarian Substackers" at an astonishing rate. It's almost like he's getting captured by his audience, or he doesn't have any sources anymore.
My Twitter feed was over-run with people celebrating his death. Former Gawker/Deadspin Twitter and Black Twitter were out in full force.
Does any know a good vet?
*flexes biceps
Because these pythons are sick.