Out of the ring and onto the net: Kayfabe as a framework for interactive texts

‘Kayfabe’ is a term widely used in wrestling to describe the maintenance and fan acceptance of the fictional and scripted elements of sports entertainment wrestling, wherein the events and interactions are treated as ‘real’. In doing so, the audience becomes a key player in the world of the text as the audience interaction becomes a catalyst for further in-world events. In this article, I argue this concept has applications in other interactive story modes and propose an analytical framework for categorising different actions through a kayfabe lens. Using examples from a form of interactive text, online transmedia stories, I show how employing kayfabe to distinguish types of comments can lead to a more nuanced discussion of interactive texts. By exploring how audience members currently respond to these texts, I demonstrate that kayfabe is valuable concept for exploring interactive stories in different contexts beyond wrestling.