I have a student who is 16 years old and believes everything kayfabe is real. And it's not that he hasn't been exposed to information. We talk about wrestling all the time. I don't pretend kayfabe is real when I talk to him about it. He reads all kinds of wrestling websites online. He somehow has constructed this mental filter for himself that blocks out any information that would lead him to conclude wrestling is staged. I once watched him read an article about the writers decision to put Seth Rollins over at Mania, and he somehow processed this inside his brain in a way that protected kayfabe.

Once we were talking about CM Punk's upcoming UFC run. I was just saying that I hope Punk does well, but he has an uphill climb having never fought like that before. He came back with, "He's been wrestling for years. He fought John Cena. He for in Ring of Honor." I could not for the life of me explain to him the difference between WWE and UFC, and why that put Punk at a disadvantage to somebody who had been training as a legit fighter their whole lives. We finally compromised on "UFC won't tolerate heel tactics," and left it at that.

The best was today, though. He started talking about how WWE needs to bring back some people form the recent past, like the Hardy Boyz and Chris Benoit. I was like, "Uh, dude, Chris Benoit isn't coming back." Somehow his brain must have filtered out every non-kayfabe thing that he has ever heard or read about Chris Benoit for all these years. He just thought he was abruptly fired under mysterious circumstances. And like I said, he goes to wrestling websites every day so he must have seen something about Benoit. It's just that he has somehow devoted a portion his unconscious mind to selectively filtering information in order to keep kayfabe alive.