Nine Inch Nails’ (NIN) Trent Reznor hangs the gloves with Twitter. He explains his decision to step back in a forum post over at NIN’s official page:
When Twitter made it’s way to my radar I looked at it as a curiosity, then started experimenting. I thought it through and in light of where I was / am in my career I decided to lower the curtain a bit and let you see more of my personality. I watched some of you get more engaged because you started to realize there’s a person (flaws and all) back there, and I watched some of you recoil in horror because I’m not what you projected on me. All expected. I’m not as concerned about “breaking” your idea of NIN at this point. It is what it is and I am what I am. The relationship between artist and fan is changing if you haven’t noticed, along with the way we consume and experience music and even communicate since the internet arrived. The problem with really getting engaged in a community is getting through the clutter and noise.
I didn’t follow many celebrities on Twitter, but Trent Reznor was one I really enjoyed following because he was actually using it like any other dude. The celebrity adoption fad of Twitter is another issue that people are being very gullible about. That is, they think they have direct access to them, but that’s like believing that because you can email them or send them letters (remember those?) they’re somehow your peers or buddies. It also goes both ways. As Trent Reznor and the rare celebs that have used Twitter without an artist/fan agenda have learned, out of 50 people that treat you and perceive you like a normal human being, for half of them you’ll always be that guy that enjoys slaughtering pigs and fucking people like animals.
