We all know my his­tory with Twit­ter — I hate it. Unre­lent­ingly. But I leave it alone, it leaves me alone and we’re quite happy ignor­ing each other. Occa­sion­ally I use it to to shout at this man as he is an old acquaint­ance I don’t get much of a chance to talk to any­more. On the whole I am aware of the dangers of Twit­ter and am happy to leave them the hell alone.

Not so for one Mr Trent Reznor, lead singer of Nine Inch Nails who has recently taken his huffy little ball and stomped all the way home. You see Trent Reznor does not under­stand the most import­ant thing about the inter­net in that it is much like the abyss — when you stare at it, it is star­ing right on back.

Now I’m not a Trent Reznor afi­cion­ado. Apart from know­ing that he is pretty short (5 foot 7 and 1/2 accord­ing to Yahoo answers) and that a guy I knew once whored him­self out to a fat chick for tick­ets to one of his shows I am pretty clue­less as to gen­eral Reznor facts. Which is why I have had to do some appro­pri­ate research before tak­ing the time to write this art­icle and what I deem appro­pri­ate is around 5 minutes scan­ning his Wiki­pe­dia art­icle and check­ing out his now fam­ous Twit­ter.

The first is a selec­tion of facts and dubi­ous accol­ades span­ning his long career (25th best metal vocal­ist out of a poll of 100, an album released on the inter­net, pla­cing 46th on a list of 100 people rein­vent­ing Amer­ica, engaged to a real life lady) and the second is an illu­min­at­ing insight into the mind of a man who takes cri­ti­cism rather badly.

Trent Reznor is, if you will, some­thing of a baby man. Regard­less of the fact that his music career has been ongo­ing for longer than my own life on earth he seems to be awfully eas­ily riled. This could be due to a num­ber of factors — like his height or the fact that he was last rel­ev­ant around 1994 no mat­ter how des­per­ately he tries to prove oth­er­wise. I don’t know. I have never met the man and am etern­ally grate­ful for this fact.

What I do know how­ever is that Trent Reznor needs to calm down. It’s just the inter­net. It can’t actu­ally hurt you unless you let it. You can always put people on ignore. You don’t have to rage quit social net­work­ing — after-all a man who claims to want to con­nect with his fans in order to re-invent the way music is con­cep­tu­al­ised and received might find social net­work­ing use­ful in the long run.

You do not have to post long rants on your per­sonal forum detail­ing why the inter­net is ruled by idi­ots and that is why the people on it can’t have nice things, like your dream forum filled with car­di­olo­gists and magical wish ponies. You do not have to link those posts on your Twit­ter for all the HATERS to read.

You do not have to be a massive drama whore whose sign off reads:

With all of that said, I have busi­ness in the real world to attend to includ­ing wrap­ping up the live ver­sion of NIN, DOING some cool new shit and spend­ing as much time as pos­sible with the most amaz­ing woman in the world.

Because on the inter­net there is already a man who does these things. A man who when not eat­ing all the food takes pic­tures of Super­man doing his wife.

What I’m say­ing Trent is that you need to dial it back now before you pull a Kevin Smith.

Trent Reznor and his totally real girlfriend
Trent Reznor kiss­ing his real life girl­friend which he totally has. I wish I was as cool as him.

5 Responses

  1. I hate this post so much. Wrote as a sort of ‘ori­enter­ing ha ha I hate Trent Reznor and am try­ing to get a handle on this inter­net blog­ging thing no-one will *ever* google this’ thing only to find out that people can­not stop gog­gling Trent sod­ding Reznor.

    Mostly all I wanted to do was post that pic­ture of Super­man doing Kevin Smith’s wife…

  2. Jen on .

  3. Wow, how did I miss this back when it happened? I’m so out of touch. With whatever you’re sup­posed to be touching.

    Any­way, for all his cry­ing (which seems to be all about people har­sh­ing on him for rav­ing about his GF–which any­one deserves; no one cares that you’re get­ting laid), he makes a good point: “We’re in a world where the main­stream social net­works want any and all people to boost user num­bers for the big sel­loff and are not con­cerned with the qual­ity of experience.”

    Trent’s prob­lem (and I still think NIN is put­ting out good music–Year Zero was a great album–and Trent deserves props for giv­ing his shit away for free after spend­ing so much time craft­ing it, regard­less of whether you think it’s up to snuff with his earlier work) is that he’s too thin-skinned when it comes to internets.

    But he’s old. He didn’t grow up with this stuff. He is, iron­ic­ally, one of the people he’s talk­ing about: not born and bred into the Inform­a­tion Age. In some fun­da­mental way, he just doesn’t get it.

    I still love Year Zero and hope he keeps pump­ing shit like that out.

  4. Leah on .

  5. That’s nice Lola, but I pre­ferred him when he was a mem­ber of Exotic Birds. He seemed so much hap­pier didn’t he.

  6. Ryan on .

  7. Trent Reznor is prob­ably one of the greatest artists of all time, he is unique and extremely clever. If you actual take a step back and listen to his songs and lyr­ics its a beau­ti­ful art that I cant com­pre­hend and most people cant. If Trent Reznor decided to enslave the world he would deserve it with no ques­tions asked. He is the kind of genius that if you began to under­stand your mind would col­lapse into itself.

  8. Lola on .

  9. I used to hang out with him in New Orleans. He’s actu­ally a very nice guy. A bit of a nerd, kinda quiet some­times, a little mis­chiev­ous– but a nice guy. I’ve watched the man handle psychotic stalk­ers and rabid fans with tol­er­ance and grace. I’m talk­ing about people who chased him down the street wav­ing & scream­ing while he was try­ing to walk his dog. Women who fol­lowed him from other states because he made the mis­take of hav­ing a one night stand with them, got jobs across the street from his stu­dio and who then beat up ladies because they had gone on a date with him. Why all this upset over his dis­like of Twit­ter? He’s allowed to think people are stu­pid. I mean, Sarah Palin Twit­ters con­stantly! Maybe he’s got a point?

  10. Maggie on .


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'Trent Reznor Rage Quits Twitter' was posted on June 12th, 2009 in the Category: News You Should Know.

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