Alan Is Good

According to the Rolling Stone and other entertainment news sources, Trent Reznor threw in the Twitter towel last week.  A few weeks ago I wrote about the ongoing trolling by Twitter users from across various message boards and forums.  Reznor said he was going to use Twitter solely to announce news and tour dates, but the @ reply trolling didn’t calm down, and succeeded in frustrating him further.

I’m truly surprised at the number and intensity of anti-Reznor blog posts and comments.  It seems like every time someone posts that “Reznor is God,” a troll is born.  Even though I disagree subjectively with a lot of the angles, I respect this post written by AndreaUrbanFox, which fully details and maps out the Reznor vs. anti-Reznor trolls saga.

Reznor has a tendency to feed the trolls.  I personally like how he responds to his haters on MySpace, even after abandoning Twitter – but he feeds them a bit too much too often.

Some people said they stopped being fans when Reznor called the MetalSludge trolls a bunch of fat girls.  Some fans turned in their chips when Reznor was too lovey dovey on Twitter about his fiancé.  And then more fans said that after reading this MySpace comment from Reznor they resigned as NIN fans forever.  Why all of the abandonment due to a man’s emotional outbursts?  People get mad and post biting comments all the time.  It’s not just Reznor, many celebrities get some serious heat for their blog posts and Tweets.  There’s something about the pedestal on which we place these famous people that puts them under some pretty intense scrutiny anyway, but online it seems to be amplified.

Reznors vs. Lesnars

Are words really that much more permanent on screen than when spoken?  Perhaps so.  Without the context, tone and face to go with the message, the mind allows the words to pierce deeper and we let ourselves get riled up more easily.  Example – UFC star Brock Lesnar is known for his anti-gay comments, for not being able to take a joke, for being generally rude, and for his post-UFC 100 words against powerful UFC sponsors and the fans themselves – but he doesn’t even own a computer, and probably thinks WordPress is a wrestling move.  His words float around on TV and interviews, so its fleeting enough that a single outburst hasn’t built up much internet hatred around him, and the UFC promotes him like crazy.  Counter this with former UFC fighter Jon “War Machine” Koppenhaver who wrote a few political MySpace blog posts and was not only fired but blacklisted from 2 different mixed martial arts organizations.  For what it’s worth, his in-ring submissions weren’t too impressive either.

Internet Love/Hate Balance

Maybe its just the big internet love/hate machine.  When P Diddy posted how excited he was that he was about to get a million Twitter followers in such a short amount of time, everyone started the #unfollowDiddy revolution and it became a trending topic on Twitter.  Once you climb the ladder, you can’t get too too big, or dare to brag about your success.  We’re American, we get jealous and turn our backs on you in an instant.  We like to see our celebrities fall because it humanizes them and brings them down to our level.  Reznor is on the brink of legendary musician status after decades of great albums and for being one of the only artists to conquer the whole web dynamic – and with all of that online love being spread, so cometh the trolls to neutralize his proverbial ascension.

Pressure on the Permanence of Print

It’s too bad that Reznor and other celebs can’t just share whatever they want to online, but that’s the nature of the web.  There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with being featured in the mainstream media, and the ice is even thinner online.  Even for rock stars and ultimate fighters who benefit from edginess and controversy, self-managed digital PR can be risky.  Even for Reznor, who understands well the nature of the digital beast, the troll onslaught was too much.  There’s nothing quite as sharp as getting online hate.  Hateful handwriting is hard to read, angry voicemails are fleeting.  You can read up on blogging/online communications and you can learn about digital PR, but it’s extremely difficult to avoid getting fired up when hateful things are posted about you online.

I tried
I gave up
Throw it away

(Nine Inch Nails – Gave Up)

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