In a not-that-surprising turn of events that I predicted back when musicians first starting jumping on the Twitter train, NIN frontman Trent Reznor — former Twitter king — is now railing against the service, though not for the reason I initially thought. According to a lengthy blog post by Trent on the NIN.com forum [via Metal Insider], the Internet haterati and psychopaths appear to have gotten the best of Trent, and he’ll be pulling out of social networking entirely for the time being:

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.

Reznor continues to explain his motivations for becoming involved with and disengaging from Twitter, and even takes a shot at the Metal Sludge message boards, which he calls “home of the absolutely worst people I’ve ever come across.”

It’s been extremely fun having this behind-the-scenes look at the person behind the name these past several months, but of course we ultimately respect Reznor’s needs. We’re also 100% sure that he’ll continue to innovate in the online space even if he’s not trading barbs with Chris Cornell.

Side discussion: is Twitter now essentially “over”? Has the service’s initial charm worn off now that it’s been invaded by the mainstream?

-VN