Swerved!

What's your take on the WWE's propensity to swerve its audience with regards to the winners of certain matches (i.e. Sheamus winning the 2012 Rumble rather than Jericho) or how angles play out (i.e. Matt Hardy being the man ruining Jeff's life rather than Christian) when Internet rumour/speculation leans too far in favour of a particular outcome, to the point where said outcome seems inevitable? On the one hand, in terms of plotting a narrative it seems ridiculous to switch from plan A to plan B simply because most people have figured out that plan A makes sense. It'd be like TV writers drastically altering the course of a season simply because message board posters correctly ascertain what's going to happen; after all, someone is always going to guess right eventually. On the other hand, I suppose it does keep things from being too unpredictable. Where do you stand?

It's not unprecedented in the world of comic books, as DC has swerved audiences before in the earlier days of the internet, but generally wrestling as an industry is the worst for that sort of thing, you're right.  The most annoying thing for me is how they publicly talk about their "characters" and "telling a story", but often you don't get a real story.  A story has a beginning, middle and end, and what we often get is a beginning and then they drop it.  Or in the case of Jericho's aborted Rumble win, they skip the beginning (Jericho wins the big match) and jump right to the middle (Jericho rubs his win in the face of CM Punk).  Or with Drew McIntyre, we get the end over and over and over again with no indication of what the beginning or middle even was.

So yeah, it's not needed.  If people guess your brilliant storylines and it's something they still want to see, just give it to them.