A week after winning the Webby Artist of the Year Award for his innovative use of the Internet in distributing his music to the world, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has apparently sworn off of social media, saying “I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it’s now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule.” To see the full extent of Reznor’s remarks, you can follow this link.
Basically, Reznor is tired of having to moderate the hateful and personal attacks of all the trolls, spammers, and, as he so eloquently states in the above quote, idiots of the Internet. To be honest, I don’t blame him for his position. As we’ve written countless times before on this blog, when people post comments on the web they simply do not think about the real world consequences of their actions. I mean, if you repeated just a few of the things you saw in an average forum thread you’d get your teeth punched in.
As sad (and accurate) as Reznor’s observations on the Internet are however, I can’t help but believe that if we all worked together, we could make the web a better place. Not too sound like too much of an idealist, but isn’t that what got us all so excited about social media in the first place; the chance to connect with the world at the touch of a button.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not naive. I know there will always be trolls and spammers on the Internet. Nevertheless, I think there is a lot of potential for improvement and it starts with each one of us. Call it the Golden Rule 2.0 – “Do unto others on the Internet as you would have them do unto you.”
Do you think Trent Reznor’s assessment of the web is right or wrong? Leave a comment and tell me why you think so.
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