It took less than three hours for WWE to be the top trend in the United States on Twitter after the Royal Rumble, but it was not in the fashion that they wanted.

Those are just a couple of examples of what was ricocheting around online after the Royal Rumble win of Roman Reigns in Philadelphia Sunday night, and they don’t bode well for WWE. It’s been known online for years as “ragequitting” or “GBCW (for ‘Goodbye, Cruel World’).”

In fairness to WWE, it’s not an issue with Reigns, not really. He’s well-liked by fans, and he has a hard-hitting style in the ring. This is not a case of the “who,” but instead, it’s the “how.” The issue is with how the Rumble winner two years in a row now has been so transparently anointed by WWE before the match, and fans are tired of being spoonfed what Vince McMahon wants, not what the fans want. Dave Batista last year returned to WWE with buzz around his appearance in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and it was obvious WWE was serving him up the Rumble win on a platter when fans were begging for Daniel Bryan to win it. Bryan didn’t even enter, and the fans’ energy turned to Roman Reigns, who had been in beast mode, eliminating over one-third of the field singlehandedly. The cheers he received were in large part a reaction against Batista, who was widely booed that night. Batista’s reception was so negative that he was quickly turned heel, and a storyline was devised to get Bryan into the Wrestlemania main event. It worked out, but it wasn’t a good start to the launch of the WWE Network.

Fast forward a year later. For months, Roman Reigns has been getting the build of an unstoppable force, and fans were sensing that he would be the Rumble winner. Take that forcefeeding of Reigns (similar to that of one Rocky Maivia in 1997) and pair it with his abysmal promo skills, and you get an absolute disaster in the making. Fans like Reigns, but boy, he did not practice promos at all when he was recovering from hernia surgery. His choke at Survivor Series, the nursery rhymes and terrible scripts he received in weeks to follow, and his clear discomfort with what he was being asked to do with a microphone turned the fans. Not because they didn’t enjoy him in the ring, but because he wasn’t ready to carry the banner as champion and anyone with working eyes and ears could distinguish that fact.

Then, joy came in the form of the return of a healthy Daniel Bryan. All was right with the world. Bryan would win the Rumble and go on to face Brock Lesnar in the ultimate David v. Goliath story at Wrestlemania 31 in San Francisco. We all could feel it. It was going to be magical and wonderful. Then Bryan got eliminated fairly early in the Rumble, and suddenly the picture became clearer, but we held out hope. Dolph Ziggler or Dean Ambrose would surely get it, right? They had mic skills (especially Ambrose), ring skills, and bled charisma. Nope, they got tossed like sacks of grain after receiving knockout punches from the Big Show. At that point, the Philadelphia crowd got very ugly, and the boos began. Not even a brief intervention by the Rock could keep the crowd from loudly expressing their hatred of an obvious finish. “We want refunds!” started to ring out in the crowd, followed by “We want Rusev!” when it was clear that he hadn’t been eliminated (that’s not good, a top heel being cheered for so vividly), and “Bullshit!”

As IGN’s Matt Fowler pointed out in the above screenshot, the subscription age does not allow for storylines to be forced upon fans. They are too smart nowadays, and they have their favorites, and it is beguiling to see how WWE continues to fight what the fans want, as if they only want our business if we are nice, subservient drones who will accept whatever we are given and pay our money quietly for it. That isn’t how it works, and it hasn’t for two decades now. Fans voted with their remotes and their merchandise money in 1996, flocking to WCW and the New World Order. Those that stuck with the then-WWF had begun to cheer one Steve Austin, well before Vince McMahon would give him any sort of push. Austin was too boring for Vince, who pushed such “talents” as Wildman Marc Mero, The Godwinns, The Smoking Gunns, and Ahmed Johnson, to name a few, ahead of a man who was clearly becoming popular with the fan base. Vince, in the face of rapidly declining ratings and market share, finally admitted that fans wanted a reality-based product, and Stone Cold finally got his push to the top. It would turn out to be WWF/WWE’s most lucrative era ever.

You would think, after the Attitude Era and how fans helped propel first Austin, then Mankind, and finally The Rock and HHH into superstardom, that the McMahon family would have learned from that episode and kept a close ear to the ground to absorb who fans liked, but ego seemed to win out time and time again. John Cena went from a clear fan favorite as the brash hip-hop character who wore Reebok pumps, classic jerseys, and chains to becoming the neutered, clean, safe Cena who rarely says anything bad and always tells us how happy he is to be here. It’s like a modern-day Dudley Do-Right, and it’s terrible. It’s no secret the fans turned on Cena when he was changed into a character fans didn’t like and when he was repeatedly forced upon us as Vince’s Chosen One. Yet, because Cena sells so well amongst the little kids, he continues to be Dudley Do-Right. The Nexus was a promising storyline and group that got cut down by the Cena myth. CM Punk’s meteoric rise amongst fans was quickly stunted by HHH’s ego. Daniel Bryan was set to be cast aside until fans clamored loudly enough. Again and again, no viable Cena alternative was developed, and it was solely the fault of bad long-term booking.

Fans now have a device to be heard quickly and noisily. It’s not a pretty one, nor should it be wielded frequently, but after two straight forcefed Royal Rumble winners, Sunday night was one of those times fans should be using it. It’s subscriptions to the network, and it was surely being heard in Stamford Sunday night.

What do you think? Comment below with your thoughts, opinions, feedback and anything else that was raised.