If you’re a NIN fan at all, I’m sure you’re aware of this controversy. I’m not going to weigh in on the actual controversy itself, other than to say it’s a bit rich for Trent to attack other people based on age and physical appearance considering the man himself looks like more like an aging soccer dad than a rock star. Hate to tell ya, guy, but all of us who started listening to your music 20 years ago are middle aged now and *gasp* so are you!
No…what I’m going to write about are the deeper implications of social networking for people with a fan base. My favorite band, Enter the Haggis, has been delving deeper and deeper into social networking the last few months and I’ve been able to observe first-hand some of the results. It’s raised a lot of questions in my mind.
Having strong social networking ties with someone creates this weird grey area even before you add in the musican/fan thing. You friend someone on Facebook, read their Twitter stream, visit their MySpace page. Maybe you exchange a few random emails, Twitter DMs, or FB messages. You might even chat directly via video as Enter the Haggis frequently does. You do all this and you come to know things about people that you don’t know about random strangers. You probably know their relationship status, where they live, their views on certain topics, what they’re doing on a daily basis. You start feeling like you’re friends…sort of.
But when the person in question is a public figure (regardless of the size of their fan base), things get complicated. Trent found that out the hard way. When you put yourself out there and reveal your ‘off-stage’ personality, you chip away at the natural wall that exists between fan and friend, creating a weird headspace I’m starting to call fanship.
It’s a weird headspace because, if I know you well enough online to know your birthday, that you colored your hair last week, your political views, where you ate lunch yesterday. etc. I know you as well as I know a lot of my real-life friends. I would, then, when I saw you, probably treat you the same way as I would any friend I hadn’t seen in awhile.
But, and this is a huge but, my real life friends know those things about me as well. They’re as tuned in to my life as I am to theirs. This is where I think the fanship construct breaks down. When you’re a public figure and you open up via social networking, you’re offering a level of intimacy you can’t possibly reciprocate. How could you, even with a smallish following, keep up with the hundreds (or in Trent’s case thousands) of people who follow you via social media? So what happens is you create a set of expectations you can’t possibly fulfill.
Most people are going to get that. I get it. But a subset of your following is *not* going to get it and they’re going to presume a bond that doesn’t exisit. Then when you do something that doesn’t meet their expectations, they’re going to go off the rails as Trent unfortunately found out.
So what’s an indie musician to do? Take your toys and go home as Trent has, apparently, done? Continue and develop a thicker skin than you might have to otherwise? I suspect the answer lies in finding the balance in the information you reveal. Not too much, so as not to encourage the weirdos, not too little or that would defeat the purpose. Thankfully, it’s not a question I have to answer.
It’s definitely something that I’ve been thinking about, though. What do you think?
