Well, I had a feeling that Nine Inch Nails’ recently loose-lipped front man Trent Reznor wouldn’t just quit Twitter without a public explanation and sure enough, we’ve got one. Reznor checked in recently with fans at his favorite rant destination: the official NIN.com forum.
“Around the time news broke of my engagement, a faction of troublemakers showed up whose sole intent was to disrupt, harass, insult and incite,” Reznor wrote of his falling out of love with Twitter’s novel way of keeping in touch with the NIN fan base. He goes on to say that blocking Twitter @haters doesn’t really do the trick, as it still leaves them a forum for contaminating the benevolent portion of NIN followers. What’s more, his inquiries on the matter to the Twitter staff were only met with rebuffs, such as “yeah, um, we’re thinking about doing something about that – people are complaining.”
The straw that broke the Prince of Darkness’ back, however, was when one person, that Reznor calls “a lonely, obsessed, delusional, bitter ‘fan’ who recently posted how the celebrity she’d most like to date is ME,” tweeted insensitive comments at the sister of Eric De La Cruz, a man who recently passed away after Reznor raised almost one million dollars in the hopes of saving his life.
“It depresses me to think my art and life’s work can attract this kind of scum,” Reznor said, adding later, “If that was your intention you trolling, cowardly pigs – you’ve succeeded.” [Insert “March of the Pigs” joke here]
Love him or hate him, Reznor’s an interesting guy and it is depressing that some anonymous person took advantage of his recent good will. Going forward, I hope Twitter can attract more @TrentReznors and less of these kind of folks, but I wouldn’t put money on it.