Can we ignore Ebert now?

Poor taste isn’t reporting the facts on whether or not someone was definitely drinking and driving. Poor taste is trying to make a cute joke hours after the death of someone’s loved one. This is the utter definition of “Too soon.”

What happened? Well, hours after the reported death of Jackass‘ Ryan Dunn, Ebert twatted, “Friends don’t let jackasses drink and drive.” It is true that Dunn had been drinking before getting in the car, but making it a point to crudely and pejoratively use the name of the show in a message to the masses was beyond unnecessary. It is snide and judgmental. What it should tell the world is that Ebert is a prick. Unfortunately, as I caught wind of the message on EW.com, it just puts the wind in the sails of other pricks.

We know that drinking and driving is dangerous behavior. It’s not a public service announcement. Be happy Twatter wasn’t around when Walt Disney died. Hours after the announcement of his death you might have encountered message like, “Smoking is dangerous. There isn’t much you can do about an Epcot-sized tumor in your lungs.”

I know that this message draws unnecessary attention to him, but from here on can we just ignore Ebert? It seems he knows he is on his last legs and his relevance is fading fast. The man does not make public appearances and cannot speak. All he has are his reviews and observations. Only when there is some sort of controversy for being snide (such as saying video games are not art) does anyone pay him any serious mind anymore. So let’s just stop responding to him.

Especially since a statement like that makes him a bigger jackass than some dude who put a toy car up his butt.

Trent Reznor is angry – abandons twitter

First, it’s about damn time Trent Reznor abandoned the twitter nonsense. Nothing good was going to come of it, and this is certainly proof of that.

So, Reznor posted a long diatribe on NIN.com about his experiment these last few years in the world of Web 2.0. Many of us agree that breaking down the normal wall of communication that exists between artist and fan was very neat and exciting, but it was going to go awry. In what I can only attribute to his being new to the internet, Reznor was surprised that unruly people would come and trash on his interactive paradise. NIN.com is a moderated community, so those people are easily dealt with; but twitter and the like are agents of chaos over which Reznor can exert no control. No sir, he doesn’t like it.

He claims he is abandoning Web 2.0 because of these unsavory elements outside of his handling. Before parting, however, he made it a point to totally rip into people who are obviously paying fans of his and tell them just how to cut themselves. To be frank, this is fucked up and really just wrong of him to say. Then again, this is to be expected of the man who wrote The Downward Spiral – no matter what he says about his growth since ‘94.

There are people who are somehow surprised that Reznor is bitter and angry, not to mention willing to bite off the heads of people with whom he disagrees. I don’t get it. By listening to a bulk of his musical catalogue, it’s clear that the man is suffering from some sort of disorder – be it mood or personality. That’s why we love his music. It lets you experience the mind of someone disorganized. At the very least, this authenticates his work. He wasn’t lying when he presented himself as an angry and destructive individual. But now it’s time for him to shut the hell up.

Twitter drama

Trent Reznor, I look up to you, so don’t be that guy. Seriously, don’t be someone who proves to me that Twitter is just the latest fad taken up by emotionally unstable people who feel the need to broadcast themselves to feel more worthwhile. LiveJournal used to be the source of internet drama, allowing people to whine about posts from people they had never met. MySpace let people violate each other’s walls and pseudo-stalk their lives by looking at their pictures. (Oh god, why is my ex with my old best friend!) I doubt I need to say much about Facebook and its broadcasting of people’s relationships. But now Twatter improves the drama with immediacy.

Reznor hasn’t done anything too bad, but he’s fed into one of those emotionally unstable attention whores. His latest twat on the service (don’t click the username) calls out an AndreaUrbanFox, saying that she sucks. Basically, UrbanFox is an internet troll. Scrolling through her twatting on the service as well as checking out her MySpace page has told me more than enough about her, and that is her relishing in pissing people off and drawing attention to herself. (She even has a MySpace blog post about being “butthurt” by the Fox, which especially irks me because I loathe that West Coast expression for being offended.) By responding to her in Twitter, Reznor unintentionally advertised for her. Even if it brought with it the ire of his fanbase, it gave her hits and made her feel more important. No offense, Mr. Reznor, but you must be new to the internet. We don’t feed the trolls.

The history of this futile drama is what I posted previously of Reznor’s drawing attention to a man in need of a heart transplant. Fox decided that this was a matter of his expressing the needs of the few over the needs of the many, as there are many homeless in Brazil due to a flood. She also accused Reznor of not investing his own money in the heart transplant for the person. So Reznor responded by linking her and saying she sucks. What could he have done better? Try linking to the charity (and she couldn’t even provide a direct link herself…) and not mentioning her at all.

Us nobodies with blogs, however, can take shots at her for you. But to be fair, her misguided heart is actually in the right place. Kinda.

Is it possible to make Twitter sound any less cool?

Trent_Reznor: Kutcher / King / DiddyDumDum on CNN doing everything in their power to make Twitter seem as un-cool as possible.

I wish I had some sort of direct link to Trent Reznor so I could share this personally (and because I bet he’s an amazing conversationalist), but Twitter doesn’t need help being uncool.  It’s a social networking microblog that mostly caters to iPhone- or Blackberry-toting hipsters and emo kids seeking relevance in their lives via the constant exchanging of vapid thoughts about the current moment.  While some people actually have something to say within the 140 character limit, most don’t.  The same people used to frequent blogs/LJs/etc., but those things are somehow less annoying to me due to the fact that they don’t focus on immediacy and urgency.  I wouldn’t put it past twatters to share with their friends that they just had the most amazing poo ever.