Trent Reznor learns that idiots rule the internet

I wish I could have saved Trent a little time. Having cut my internet teeth in 1993 lurking in IRC chat rooms, I know all too well the kind of people that plague the internet. I say plague because like any social ecosystem there are the deviants that attempt to corrupt it because they cannot find a way to participate in it in a constructive manner. It’s just a sad reality that we have come to accept. So with this, the idiots have ruined it for the rest of us and Trent is leaving Twitter.

Thanks for giving it a shot Trent, I enjoyed it while it lasted and will continue to check out NIN.com from time to time.

In Trent’s case, it was pretty easy to see this coming. Think about it for a minute and you will find that for any system, there will be anarchists who thrive on trying to break down the organized collective. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t value in Trent Reznor’s experiment. That doesn’t mean that I don’t applaud him for the effort. I will miss his presence on Twitter because I enjoyed seeing the human side of the fierce music.

Anonymity Sucks

I bet you hate that one. That’s really the trick though. If you were to look at all of the hate comments I get, and I get a lot, almost all of them are posted with bogus email addresses. I am not a celebrity. I might reach 20,000 people a month with my blog. Trent Reznor reaches millions. Take the hate I get, amplify it by exponential idiots, religious zealots and the Metal Sludge contingents he mentions, and you have a perfect storm of hate. The sad truth is that most of the people spewing this garbage would gush and fawn if they met him in person.

I seriously doubt that if I met one of my haters in public they would walk up, punch me in the face, yell Microsoft sucks and then take away my laptop. That’s what they would have you think. I am often told I am too stupid to own a computer. Yes, I develop software for the largest computer software maker in the world. I create music and artwork on computers and am quite savvy on the little electronic buggers, but obviously a 15 year old Digg user knows much more than me and by that feels the right to banish me from the internet. Riiiiiight.

Facebook Can Help

Facebook is ubiquitous and has something really powerful going for it. People have their friends and family on there. It publishes your activity. I am sure you are wondering what Facebook would have to do with Nine Inch Nails, Digg or Engadget type user communities. Facebook Connect could be the key.

Real Identity

Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

It will be hard to get through the ability to create an account just to hag with, but potentially there could be ways to thwart that. Maybe you have some rules in place like minimum account life, number of friends, etc. Create some way to prove that it’s a person who is actively using it. I guarantee you that the number of hateful profane comments is seriously limited when people you know and have some respect for can see them.

It’s not the answer, just an idea

Adding a big brother element isn’t the right answer. It’s just a thought of where we can start. As awesome as anonymity is when you want to order some weird sex toy or order Viagra, (heh) there are some ways that it is limiting the growth and usefulness of the internet. I guarantee I am not the only one that completely ignores comments on Digg.com. I bet I am not the only one that goes out of my way to avoid getting drawn into a flame thread on a blog. Even in IRC chat on #Wordpress on irc.freenode.net, which is a really valuable forum for people developing with Wordpress, there are trolls. They come in and dog people, flood people, and are just simply dicks. If we figure out a way to keep these pricks from hiding behind an ISP and a fake (and probably cooler than they really are) persona, the quality of conversation on the internet will probably increase exponentially.

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