Alan Is Good

(A good video to play/listen to while you read this)

Bite The Hand That Tweets

Nine Inch Nails vocalist Trent Reznor explains in a recent message board post that he’s done with online communities and social networks due to a large amount of negativity and trolling directed toward him.  Apparently there was an unmanageable amount of hateful comments and replies posted to Reznor on NIN.com and Twitter that set him off and resulted in his Twitter ‘vow of silence.’

Reznor explains, “The problem with really getting engaged in a community is getting through the clutter and noise. In a closed environment like nin.com a lot of this can be moderated away, or code can be implemented to make it more difficult for troublemakers to persist. It’s tedious and feels like wasted energy doing that shit, but some people exist to ruin it for others – and they are the ones who have nothing better to do with their time.”

While the moderators of the NIN boards were doing a good job deterring trolls and hateful posts, it’s the nature of the troll to circumvent and persist despite active policing.  Nine times out of ten, if you ask an internet troll, “Why?” the response is, “To waste someone else’s time.”  Sad, but true.

Bow Down Before The One You Swerve

Reznor is heralded as one of the only artists who “gets it” and has done new media/social media the right way.  His perspective and relationship with the internet dynamic has always been open-minded and welcoming, a stark contrast to the majority of copyright-concerned artists and labels.  His viral efforts over the years are easily among the most innovative and effective of any corporate marketing/PR campaign.  To promote his Year Zero album in 2007, his tactics included leaving traces of futuristic micro sites that dissected the story behind the album, and purposely leaking an MP3 of his upcoming single My Violent Heart on a USB drive left in a bathroom in Portugal.  While some credit Radiohead with the “free downloadable album” concept, it was actually several months prior when Reznor released a substantial amount of his Ghosts I-IV album for free, and fully supported the distribution of the files via Bit Torrent.  He also released his latest album The Slip as a completely free download, and didn’t even bother promoting the release date.  Needless to say, each of these viral efforts was extremely well executed, and the internet was indeed abuzz at Reznor’s every move.

Regarding his new media tactics, Reznor asserts, “The reason no record label knows how to market anything to new media is they don’t live there. They don’t get it because they don’t use it. . . . Faced with leaving the infrastructure of traditional record labels and figuring out what the right thing to do is in this new world – I found myself realizing that for me to have any concept of how to interact with the community and know what they might want / what they find appropriate, I need to immerse myself in that world and live it for a while.”

Reznor’s perspective and creative handling of the web makes his vow of silence all the more disappointing.  Nine Inch Nails fans everywhere were thrilled when Reznor decided to create a Twitter profile and share his slices of life with the world starting in late 2008.  Reznor’s Twitter presence was everything fans could have asked for – NIN tour news, post and pre-show thoughts, contests for free tickets, active replies and reTweets, and of course, random, silly musings straight from the source.  He wasn’t just being a self-absorbed rock star, either.  Recently he began supporting and promoting the hash tag #Eric, a cause to raise money for a young boy who needs a heart transplant.

I Bet You Think This Blog Is About You

How did things sour for Reznor and the internet?  While it’s hard to say exactly what changed in Reznor’s attitude, there are a few suspects and culprits to point toward.  Reznor himself identifies the Metal Sludge community as a hateful band of trolls who direct a lot of hate toward him.  Formerly they would hate him from the Metal Sludge message boards and occasionally flame the NIN.com boards, but apparently they decided to bombard Reznor on Twitter with a large amount of trollish @ replies.  This was apparently a more effective and intravenous way of getting under his skin.

Another key troll that ruffled Reznor’s feathers was a Twitter user named @FredGarrett who was very adamant in his assertion that the whole #Eric movement was a PR stunt that served to make up for Reznor’s foul-mouthed lashings being dealt out to other trolls on Twitter.  Reznor became enraged at everything @FredGarrett would say, and was absolutely infuriated at the suggestion of using #Eric as a PR ploy.  Fred wrote several blog posts about his stance on the #Eric issue and his flame war with Reznor – check out the link on his Twitter if you care to read them.  This site is arguably of a higher standard than to be giving inbound link love to a troll blog.

I Wanna Block You Like An Animal

Between the massive amounts of hateful @ replies on Twitter, FredGarrett’s conspiracy theory, and fans who felt that he was ’selling out’ by finding a woman he wants to marry, Reznor decided to call it quits on social networking.  His ultimate goal online is to eradicate the anonymity of the internet to provide a more credible community and open forum.  He explains, “The idea was to have a place where you can actually discuss whatever and have some idea of who you’re conversing with. For example, if we were discussing drumming techniques and you can see that someone participating in the discussion is a drum instructor vs. a 13 year old kid Googling answers, you’d have the proper context in which to have a potentially valid discussion.”

He suggests that if Twitter can enhance the ability to block other users, spammers and trolls, that he may again venture into Twitterland.  Perhaps an @ reply word filter would benefit many high-profile celebrities who run the risk of being rampantly trolled by the millions of followers they have.  It feels great to receive Twitter praise and adoration – conversely, checking your iPhone to see hateful Tweet-flamer messages is a very rotten experience.  Trent’s anonymity-void dream is one that many online community managers and moderators would welcome, but the opposition across the table is clamoring just as loud for more privacy online.

The Trolls Can All Sleep Soundly, And Everything’s All Right

You can never kill off a savvy troll’s efforts completely.  They will make throwaway email addresses, they will hide behind proxies so that you can’t block their IP addresses, and they will exploit any vulnerabilities present in your database.  For every troll that hides behind a proxy server to make someone’s life miserable, there are five honest people who used the proxy to work around their country’s suppression of online communications.  See China, Tehran.

It’s a disappointing reality that we all have our breaking point when it comes to trolls.  For some people, a single negative wall post or comment will ruin their day, while others can maintain a cool head and fight the trolls for a good while.  Then one day they find their entire profile or website hacked and loaded with pornographic images, and they finally break down.  My troll ideology is similar to the Jurassic Park Tyrannosaurus Rex theory – they can’t see you if you don’t move.  They feed off your movement, your panic, your response, your fury.  Stay still and let them pass.

I Was Down In It, Now I’m Up Above It

Unfortunately, Reznor has opted to remain silent, or ’still’ by detaching himself from the online space.  Reznor won’t respond to you anymore, nor wish you a public happy birthday like would for his friends.  The Twitter account is now a one-way communication channel that will link to tour updates and other relevant links.  You can’t blame him for hating the internet for a while.  Especially given all that he’s done for the online community, this must be an especially disappointing experience.  The trolls haven’t really won, though.  Reznor is regarded as one of the best artists of our time, and has really done it all.  Now he’s off to wrap up the final NIN tour, spend time with someone he feels very deeply about, decompress and enjoy life.

There Is No Me, There Is Only You

Reznor wasn’t forced or exiled from the internet.  He essentially said, “Blow me,” and left on his own terms.

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