Perception is important. The old playground argument, “I don’t care what you think of me,” only works if you’re still living at home off your parents income. Anyone who has a job, whether that job is flipping burgers at McDonald’s or entertaining thousands in jam-packed arenas, should care a great deal about what others see in them.
This applies double to professional wrestlers.
In traditional sports, the only thing that really matters is how good you are. If you’re putting up 25 points a night in the NBA you can get away with murder. Or rape. Coaches are paid to get results, because it equals more money for the franchise; in any sport, the bottom line is always money, and anyone who tells you anything different is either lying or incredibly stupid.
In wrestling, you have a similar dynamic within the major companies when a Vince McMahon who will do things regardless of what fans are reacting to, but on the independents you live and you die by what the fans think of you. You are a brand, and you’re out there competing with 500 other brands, fighting and clawing to stay relevant and get the fans to care about your shtick. Nobody is going to come save you if your popularity ship starts to sink; not unless it somehow benefits them.
Here’s a quote from a pretty successful dude who knows a thing or two about branding:
“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.”
-Elon Musk
Enter, Aldo Rose. Formerly WWE Superstar Adam Rose.
Rose is currently in the trenches on social media, fighting a battle on perception. He may not fully realize (or care) that this is the battle he’s fighting, but it is. The incident started because of a t-shirt he recently put out, that featured his own mugshot from a recent domestic abuse case. As you can expect, the internet went wild and the shirt was eventually pulled before production.
Rose is unapologetic. He insists that it was his life that was ruined by the last few months of struggle, and therefor no one gets to tell him how to handle the situation. He even stated, “ironically my wife suggested the shirt and actually wanted it put on a wife beater tank top.” As if that somehow makes it less culturally tone deaf.
Instead of understanding why a large percentage of his fanbase (or potential fanbase) is upset, and possibly very offended by jokes made at the expensive of alleged domestic violence, he has since resorted to name-calling, “your mom” jokes, and fat-shaming his followers on Twitter.
From a certain point of view, I understand where Rose is coming from. He and his wife have been through a lot in the last few months. His career, his world, have been turned upside down. When you feel like things are out of control, there’s a desire to reach out and take that control back. But when you have that celebrity spotlight on you – even as a minor celebrity – everything you do and say effects people’s perception of you. And as we’ve already mentioned, perception is everything in a world where you live and die on your own branding.
The reality here (sorry, Justin) is that fans aren’t ganging up on Rose over a t-shirt design. As culturally tone deaf as the design was, it goes beyond that. Here’s where the perception of Aldo Rose current sits:
- Rose was an under-utilized comedy character in WWE. This might not seem like it matters in the context of the argument, but we do unfortunately live in a world where people are more willing to give you second and third chances if they take you seriously as a performer (see: Matt & Jeff Hardy).
- Rose was suspended by WWE for violating their Wellness policy. He has claimed that he was innocent, and only taking ADHD medication that the company was already aware of. He even produced a doctor’s note backing up his claims.
- Rose was arrested on charges of domestic abuse and tampering with a witness. He grabbed his wife’s face during an argument and ripped the phone away from her when she called 911.
- Rose asked for his release from WWE and was granted it.
- Rose had all charges against him dropped. He is seeing a counselor on a weekly basis. That counselor is his pastor, as well as a men’s Bible study group. Apparently that counts as a legally valid source of therapy in this country.
- Rose released a t-shirt with his mugshot from the domestic abuse arrest. The shirt was taken down and never produced.
As you can see, the incidents do really add up quickly. If you’re a fan that’s been paying attention over the past few months, it would be really easy to see Rose as a bad person. His perception is at a career low right now, and he continues to dig himself a deeper hole with every ill-advised tweet calling his detractors “judgmental turds”.
On a personal note, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Prior to this month, Rose came off like a very genuine and sweet family man who cares a great deal about his community and his children. He has done a lot to help others, and beyond what we’ve seen lately, I thought him a legitimately decent human being.
When the s–t hits the fan though, your true character is revealed. I don’t know if that’s what is happening to Rose right now, whether we are seeing him for who he truly is, or if he is just incredibly ignorant to current culture and the way people perceive things like domestic abuse and drug policy violations in 2016. Either way, he’s coming off like a petulant child that doesn’t want to take responsibility for anything that’s happened to him. The “I quit WWE so I can be edgy and controversial now” routine is tired and boring; better acts than Rose have already been there, done that.
For instance, it’s completely possible that Rose was only using ADHD medication when WWE suspended him. We all know the Wellness policy has some bugs it desperately needs to figure out. It’s also possible that he had informed WWE for the last year that he was taking the medication. Here’s the thing: that doesn’t make him innocent. Regardless of what the substance is, it clearly violated the WWE Wellness policy that he, as a performer, signed and agreed to follow.
I agreed that there wouldn’t be marijuana in my system when signing zero-tolerance paperwork to become a manager at my job. I disagree with today’s anti-marijuana employment standards, especially in a state where the substance is legal and regulated/taxed by government, but those are terms I signed on for, and I will absolutely take responsibility for my actions should they ever find traces of marijuana upon drug testing me. When you work a job, and you sign a contract, you are agreeing to their terms and conditions, whether you like them or not.
And here’s the thing – Rose knows this, because this was his SECOND VIOLATION! Take responsibility for what is in your body. Period.
Even that is small potatoes compared to the social implications of domestic abuse in this era. I can not believe that Rose is stupid enough to truly not understand the backlash against his mugshot t-shirt. That his wife supposedly thought it would be hilarious to put it on a wife-beater as some kind of ironic joke doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse.
We live in a society where domestic abuse is a real, massive problem. The way it’s handled, and the amount of criminals that go unpunished every year, or slapped on the wrist, is an equally enormous issue.
Okay, so maybe nothing serious actually happened between Rose and his wife; maybe the entire thing really did get blown out of proportion, as he suggests. Does that make it okay to joke about being arrested for domestic violence? Does putting that mugshot on a wife-beater tank top really sound like something a former WWE Superstar, who has women and children that follow him and look up to him as a performer/brand/role model – does that sound like a great idea to anyone? Because from were a lot of people are sitting, making a joke about domestic violence, never mind trying to actually profit off said joke, does nothing but further invalidate the cases of people actually living through the hell of abuse.
And there are some not convinced that Rose was innocent in this case. Charges being dropped is not the same thing as a jury of your peers finding you innocent of all charges. There are some that would point out that a 911 call was still made. That Rose was still charged with tampering with a witness because he tried to stop his wife from making that 911 call. That if things weren’t really serious, and it was all just a big misunderstanding, why would she have made that call in the first place, and why would he need to stop her?
Do these implications mean anything? Maybe not. But they’re definitely questions that would have been asked by the prosecution if the case had actually gone to trial. And they are questions that still haven’t been addressed by Rose or his wife.
When you live in a society where thousands of partners are abused every year, and there are well-documented cases of charges being dropped against abusers because of sociopathic relationships and the control those partners have on their significant others, those kinds of questions stick in people’s minds. And it’s those kinds of things that a good person, a decent person, would be aware of in our current social climate.
Aldo Rose needs to address the perception that society currently has of him. If not for the mindset of his fanbase, then at least for his own success. All he’s managing to do right now is dig the whole a little deeper, one moronic tweet at a time.
