TRENT REZNOR QUITS TWITTER - HOW REAL IS TOO REAL IN SOCIAL MEDIA?

Trent Reznor Quits Twitter – How Real is Too Real in Social Media?

Posted on 11. Jun, 2009 by refe in INNOVATION

If you were on Twitter at all yesterday you probably heard the big news. NIN frontman Trent Reznor - often hailed as the most tech-savvy man in the music biz – has given up on Web 2.0. How could one of the most prolific rock star Twitter users (641,977 followers at time of writing) pull such an abrupt about-face?

Reznor explains himself in an open letter posted on the NIN forums that is characteristically articulate and colorful. In it, he cites ‘idiots’ as his primary motivation for giving up on social media, saying,“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.”

How real is too real?

This brings up a something I’ve actually been thinking a lot about lately. At what point does openness in social media go from being helpful to harmful in the artist/fan relationship?

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a moment. Celebrities – whether movie stars, rock stars or pro athletes – appeal to us largely because they’re unapproachable. We see the roles they play or listen to the songs they sing and we begin to build up a persona in our minds that we project on the celebrity. They become something larger than life, and when our access to them is limited there is nothing to contradict what we’ve imagined to be true. That’s exactly what happened with these NIN fans. They latched on to something in Reznor’s message and that became who he was to them.

“My world is upside-down.”

Then he joined Twitter and fell in love. Reznor hasn’t exactly been shy about his love life lately, and his updates have frequently been one-hundred and forty characters of romance, butterflies and batting eyelashes. I’ve put a few of them up for you here to check out yourselves. Not exactly the angry, self-loathing industrial music poster boy so many had come to idolize. These updates disrupted the image he had cultivated in the 90’s and which his legions of fans had since elaborated on. Some have seemed to grow with him, endeared by this softer side of Trent. Others hate him for ’selling out’ and turning his back on everything he had preached for over a decade. As one fan put itin response to one of Reznor’s mushier updates, “My world is upside-down.”

Reznor responds to all of this in his letter, “I was not expecting to broadcast details of my love life there, but it happened because I’m in love and it’s all I think about and that’s that. If this has bummed you out or destroyed what you’ve projected on me, fair enough – it’s probably time for you to leave. You are right, I’m not the same person I was in 1994 (and I’m happy about that). Are you?”

Leave some mystery

Trent Reznor has every right to grow up. He should grow up! No one can keep writing the same words for ten years without starting to force it. Yet, it isn’t just that he is a happier, better adjusted individual than he was when he began his career. He simply communicated to much. The man behind the music revealed himself to be very little like the music he made and that just isn’t what many fans want. They want the entire experience of artist and art to be consistent.

If you plan on taking away all of the mystery and inference of your persona as an artist you can expect to turn a few people off. Just to be clear: I’m not in anyway advocating that musicians come up with some pre-planned alter-ego designed to best compliment the type of image they’re going for. I’m just trying to be realistic about what it means to be an artist. Build relationships and be authentic – but remember to leave a little mystery, too. Authenticity is not about divulging every thought that runs through your head, it’s about being honest in what you say and do. Even being a little vulnerable. I don’t think that Reznor will be the last high profile artist to recognize the double-edged nature that social media can be in the artist/fan relationship.

The lesson here? Bare your soul in your music, not on Twitter.

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Tags: NIN, social media, Social Networking, Trent Reznor, Twitter, Web 2.0

10 Responses to “Trent Reznor Quits Twitter – How Real is Too Real in Social Media?”

Eugenia

11. Jun, 2009

Sorry, I don’t agree. People should open up on their blog, twitter, music, lunch break… It is not a mistake to write about personal things online (as long as they don’t put you in legal trouble). It’s this “keep it to yourself” that has destroyed much of our society and has created creeps.

I use my blog and Twitter to spit out everything I feel and think. Sometimes, shocking things. Back in the day I used to run a 200,000+ pageviews per day tech news site, and I can tell you, as I am a strongly opinionated person, it has earned me a lot of enemies over the years.

This has not stopped me from telling people who I really am though, or what I believe. Trent Reznor and any other celebrity should just grow some thicker skin and be true to themselves. If he’s a sensitive person these days, that’s who he should project that he is. Not hide it.

The trolls will eventually die down. They all grow up eventually, and the next-gen of trolls would have growing up in the “new” Trent Reznor era, and so they would take him for granted and not troll on him.

Besides, the “softer” Trent Reznor will earn him new fans. I am now more of a fan of his than I was 2 days ago (I don’t particularly like his music, only my husband does in our home).

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refe

11. Jun, 2009

I would probably never recommend that anyone spit out everything they feel and think in any forum – whether public or private. I don’t mean that to come across as a personal judgement on you, but I just don’t think that’s a wise way to communicate. Especially when your livelihood is so tied up in your personal brand the way it is for artists. You can’t please everyone all the time – nor should you try, or care – but thinking a little bit before you speak or type is never a bad idea.

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refe

11. Jun, 2009

Also, there is a difference between engaging with fans and treating every fan like a best buddy or a confidante. How it looks for each person will be very different of course, but I think it’s still a very important distinction to make. It comes down to the goal of your social networking – make friends? espouse ideas? get fans involved with your art? sell records? How and when you use social media depends a lot on your answer. As long as you have some idea of what you are trying to accomplish you shouldn’t get into too much trouble. Unless of course that’s what you are trying to accomplish

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Eugenia

11. Jun, 2009

>I just don’t think that’s a wise way to communicate

I fail to see how it’s not a wise way to communicate when you are simply giving yourself out for others to read. That’s _the_ way to communicate, without any masks and reality distortion fields. It’s pure.

Of course, as you said, there will be people who won’t get it and they will call you out for this or that. But do they really matter? I mean, if they don’t get you, they don’t get you. But there will be others who will. If open communication gets you come closer to 100 people while alienating another 200, that’s better than not having any relation to any of the 300. To me, the relation in itself is the important thing.

Communicating just via PR is just so old century to me. I wish more people were more outspoken and not so “privacy-sensitive”. I don’t understand what they have to hide anyway. Unless it doesn’t put you in legal trouble, it’s good enough to be shared with the world. It will liberate you. Be it a lowly worker with a free wordpress account, or a rock star.

That’s my opinion anyway. I guess our disagreement is more philosophical than anything else.

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Bill

17. Jun, 2009

I don’t see a need for Twitter at all. Anyone who thinks his or her thoughts, actions, words, ideas, feelings, movements, purchases, travels, and/or opinions are worth posting to be read by every person on the planet is a sorry person indeed.

I no more care what Trent Reznor thinks than I care what Eugenia thinks.

People should *not* be expected to “open up on their blog, twitter, music, lunch break…” Or, to put it another way, people who do not follow Eugenia’s definition of an open and healthy society should not be made to feel inferior. A loud mouth, or a poison pen, does not a balanced society make. In fact, just the opposite.

I think Trent made the right decision if for no other reason than he made the decision himself. He chose to get involved with Twitter. He chose to end his involvement with Twitter. Why is that a problem?

Musicians do not owe the world their innermost thoughts. Nor do they owe anyone a step-by-step record of their daily lives.

Twitter is just another form of voyeuristic tabloid journalism, engorged on its own self importance, feeding an insatiable audience too feeble-minded to create their own lives and think their own thoughts.

Frankly, I think society has taken a sorry, scary turn.

And, yes, I’m well aware these are merely my opinions. They can be discarded as readily and painlessly as one would discard used Kleenex.

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Jw

19. Jun, 2009

I’m glad to hear any news of someone abandoning Twitter. I find it to be very passive, if innocuous. I don’t think that sort of egocentric one-way communication is good. With so many people shouting into the darkness, it’s extremely hard to have a discussion or meaningful conversation with anyone, be they friend or celebrity.

And I know, discussion is certainly not the point of Twitter. I’m just saying I find that sort of connectivity to be pointless. I’d rather get a monthly newsletter from an artist than their random hourly musings.

I do prefer a bit of mystery in life. I guess that’s why my foray into the world of Twitter lasted seven hours before I deleted my account.

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Gigi Greco

20. Jun, 2009

While I am neither a Twitter Fanatic nor a Twitter Hater, however, I do believe that Twitter does not hold the same value for everyone or for every situation and certainly has more than it’s fair share of gratuitous moments depending on who is sharing the private moment with the world.

Of course, my Aunt Millie’s tweet admitting she hates my mother’s coffee will not matter to anyone other than my mother and anyone else who may also dislike my mother’s coffee. In essence,I believe that the emperor’s new clothes fit some better than others.

In this regard, I don’t agree that Trent Reznor having publicly bared his soul has diminished his popularity or marred in any magnitude his fans’ perceptions of him. On the contrary, I would bet that for all the fans who have outwardly protested, there are ten times as many who sat back quietly admiring him for his openness wishing they could be more like him in that respect. If that were the case, it’s very possible that they would be out there singing his praises just as loudly, if not more so, than those who have protested.

I strongly subscribe to the school of thought that teaches us there are two unmistakable elements which strike the loudest chord with the online public; and subsequently it is these two traits that become the driving force which compels these people as individuals to share their discoveries with their fellow web dwellers. Most anything of note that has become viral has these two traits in common: Authenticity and Accessibility. This theory has been simply yet eloquently outlined and demonstrated in a video presentation to the Library of Congress highlighting the findings of an experiment conducted by the University of Kansas Anthropology Dept. entitled “The Anthropology of YouTube”. which, of course, can be found on YouTube. I would highly recommend watching this video to anyone in the marketing sector or anyone with an interest in mass psychology.

I think Trent Reznor is and will always be a student of the study of man and as being such, he knew exactly what he was doing before he signed on to Twitter as well as exactly how he would be signing off and thereby denouncing Twitter, as it were. He, after all, regrettably so, admits that he had made himself too accessible to his fans and he openly blamed himself for allowing his own authenticity to peak through as being a mistake. This, for all intensive purposes could very well have been Trent Reznor’s own anthropological experiment in which he was both subject and tester, and in keeping true to form, he had to push this theory to it’s limits. I suppose we will have to wait for his next public move to get a hint of his findings. Hmmm… If only he were still on Twitter.

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GSP

03. Jul, 2009

@gigi you nailed it, I agree completely.

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DateMonthYear

18. Jul, 2009

Amazingly immature behaviour from Reznor, and a sad indinctment on some his ‘fans’. If you open your mouth in public, and if people actually listen,then you take the consequences.

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women pee pants

24. Jul, 2009

well.. it’s like I knew!

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