Trent Reznor Says Facebook is for Fakers (Like Trent Reznor)
Trent Reznor really can't stand social networking. A year and a half after fleeing the angry trolls on Twitter, the Nine Inch Nails founder explains that he thinks "Facebook sucks" because it's a breeding ground for poseurs.
Reznor told the website Drowned In Sound that people on Facebook pretend to like bands they don't like in order to give off the air of having certain fashionable cultural tastes. He said he doesn't like that Facebook has "That sense of, 'here's the books I'm supposed to have read for the social archetype I want to fit into, so I'll portray myself this way.' I've seen that with people I know in real life, and I check them out online, it's not always the same person... I'm just coming from an older school of when you met people you met... a real person and not some avatar of themselves."
Right. Of course, Reznor knows from avatars: "Nine Inch Nails" is a band consisting of... Trent Reznor and Trent Reznor alone, creating a variety of digital sounds in the studio via samplers, synthesizers, drum machines and electronic instruments like keyboards and guitars. So he's essentially a musician who leveraged a digitally mediated virtual persona to make millions of dollars, but who thinks it "sucks" when other people leverage digitally mediated virtual personas to make some online friends.
When not hating on Facebook, Reznor kept busy making the soundtrack for The Social Network, a movie about Facebook. How's that for staying culturally fashionable?