I hadn't heard much about professional wrestling since the late 90s, when the Rock had sideburns and wasn't a movie star known as Dwayne Johnson. 

That was until about a year ago, when my students started showing up wearing WWE t-shirts and the comedian Marc Maron began working interviews with WWE stars into his WTF podcast, in between talks with more typically hip guests. He took on a sheepish tone when admitting his limited knowledge of the field, as though that represented a sort of cultural blind spot.

Then I noticed the snark in my Facebook stream, as more and more people targeted a guy named Roman Reigns, and a bunch of my friends started canceling plans in order to stay home and watch wrestling on TV.