FanPost

In Remembrence of Two of the Absolute Greatest Wrestling Twitter Accounts of all time, @DeathToAllMarks and @SenorLariato

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Tonight, as SummerSlam was sputtering through its final, waning moments, word began to creep around that something damn near unthinkable had happened: the WWE was cracking down on SS gifs *hard*, and that there were two irreplaceable casualties: @DeathToAllMarks and @SenorLariato.

For the unaware, DTAM and Lariato were the two most enthusiastic, dedicated wrestling .giffers around. Lariato in particular is a tragic case, as he barely ever bothered with WWE. Rather, he enthusiastically tweeted snippets of anything from NJPW to AJPW to ancient World of Sport matches. A wide variety of styles and disciplines, many from obscure times and places, were presented, discussed, and, most importantly, *celebrated.* He was relentlessly positive, and had genuine love for all facets of the industry in some way, shape or form. WWE talent from Cesaro to Big E followed him for his dedication to providing the internet with wrestling content from ALL eras, in 6-10 second snippets at a time. I got into NJPW back in the day in part due to Lariato's infectious enthusiasm.

DTAM is a whole 'nother story. While similar in format and nature, he discussed American wrestling, not only posting gifs of notable moments from shows like Superstars and Main Event, leading me to seek them out when I'd otherwise ignore D-level content from an already oversaturated WWE week, but took it upon himself to report on plausible rumors and breaking news, wading through the bullshit and saving me and many others from digging through endless dirtsheeet reports of little-to-no substance. He was the man that tweeted the first video of Cesaro's post-draft promo, garnering 5k+ retweets and 7k+ likes, being retweeted and commented upon by no less than Sasha Banks herself, no doubt having a direct hand in bringing attention to one of the highlights of the draft. He's always been helpful(open DMs for questions and requests), dedicated(all those live NJPW tweets!), friendly, enthusiastic, and, above all else, passionate. Passionate for an industry dominated by a company more interested in the thoughts and feelings of its stockholders than the feelings of its most hardcore, loyal fans.

He was far and away my favorite twitter account, and the go-to for many sites, even this one, to provide material in the form of embeddable tweets; wrestling moments to enhance and enrich the fan's experience in learning about what exactly was happening in these matches and why it was significant. How else were new fans supposed to know that Seth busted out God's Last Gift in his title match with Finn?

Sadly, it seems that their run is over. Dedicated fans of an at times ridiculous and exhausting industry, permanently wiped away for excitedly promoting copyrighted content with no compensation whatsoever.

These individuals made me love wrestling more than ever. Lariato, amongst a list of other things, exposed me to older Japanese wrestling I might not have ever known of, and DTAM, when not gif-ing, was invaluable in disseminating and filtering out news and prominent happenings in the world of US wrestling, out of pure love and respect for this silly business that we all love.

Thank you for everything, guys. From the bottom of my heart, you both made me a better wrestling fan and kept me watching when I was ready to step away and be done on more than one occasion.

My heart is broken for these two, punished for having a small, devoted following sharing a common love and sharing it in harmless snippets at a time.

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