Trapt, the nü-metal run-off responsible for 2002's “Headstrong” and one of 2014's least essential albums, has been throwing a tantrum on Twitter for at least six days straight. In an effort to understand why, exactly, they’re mad enough to be devoting themselves to this truly inhuman posting effort, we’ve stared straight into the abyssal depths of a band truly headstrong enough “to take on anyone” it believes is wrong.
As Slate’s Ashley Feinberg points out, the best place to start looking at Trapt’s unhinged Twitter spree is on March 14, when its official account decided to call Bishop Talbert Swan, best known as a civil rights activist, “THE authority on victim mentality.”
This, it goes without saying, is extraordinary shitty. And yet, despite having just sent the sort of message that would make any decent person sick with shame, Trapt tapped into the early ‘00s nü-metal spirit of unending, generalized aggression and used that fevered source not as the inspiration for songs about being mad at their girlfriends or whatever, but to keep tweeting a maelstrom of garbage.
Scrolling back through Trapt’s Twitter feed (which, we should make clear, is not a constructive use of your time), it seems like the band just sort of does this constantly. As far back as late February—the spot where we had to tap out—Trapt was using its account to argue with people with double digit followers who write mean things about Trump, get up in Jon Cryer’s replies, and, uh, defend the integrity of the Unite The Right rally.
But, over the last week, having more effectively stirred the hornet’s nest by targeting their horseshit at Bishop Swan and Chris Evans, they’ve been given an opportunity to really get into it with any (and apparently all) comers. The deluge is far-reaching, unified in theme only by a desire to be as scummy as possible, but it can be broken down into a few different categories.
First, there are the tweets sticking up for Trump and insisting that he’s right to call the coronavirus “the Chinese virus.”
Second, there’s the unsurprising category of messages filled with terms like “snowflake,” “virtue signaling,” and “victim mentality.”
Third, and definitely worst of all, there’s a ton of tweets directing blame at Black Americans for “being victims” and telling people that true equality magically came into effect in modern society as soon as the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.
There are many, many, many more tweets like these, all using variations on the same wording and reminding anyone who dares question the wisdom of Trapt that the band’s authority stems from its “2 million Spotify and 2.6 million Pandora listeners.”
Adding to all of this, the last notable category of Trapt tweets is the variety of replies peppered with some old-fashioned ‘80s high school comedy-level bullying. In these, the band tells other Twitter users that its audience consists of “all American football player types” who stuff the kind of nerds who disagree with them in garbage cans.
In this same vein, Trapt has also been spending its time assuring us that it is “not metal” and calling people fat.
The band has made it clear that it’s having a good time acting like reprehensible doofuses, which doesn’t mean that the entire thing isn’t an incredible spectacle worth noting, but does suggest that any time spent provoking them further is probably wasted. Trapt will never stop arguing. They can do this forever. If you need a further reminder, know that they’ve promised to be insufferable Twitter dweebs for nearly two decades now, describing just how they’d do it in the song that once gave them relevance:
“Back off, I’ll take you on.
Headstrong to take on anyone.
I know that you are wrong.
Headstrong. We’re headstrong.”
[via Slate]
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