[Time_To_Come_Clean: The_Official_WTC_FAQ]

You know what, people? I think the first phase of WTC has fully run it's course. It's time for us to come clean about a couple of things. With that in mind, I hereby present to you the official WTC FAQ. It's a long one, folks, and it may be a shocker for some of you. I apologize for that, but without further ado:

How did this batshit insane website ever get started?

Once upon a time, there were two geeky, aesthetic theory obsessed, college kids who totally bonded over their ridiculously over-invested love for Nine Inch Nails, circa 1994. They waited with baited breath for The Fragile, but it was a bit of a scary, worrisome disappointment in their eyes, and by that time, one of them had disastrously dated the other one's sister, and they weren't speaking. After that, the Nine Inch Nails fever receded to a position of dormancy, much like the virus that causes cold sores to emerge on one's lip: it never dies, but sometimes you don't have to experience the final indignity of it for... uh... let's just go with 6 years. At which point, some fucking thing triggers a re-emergence. That thing, in this case, was the phoenix-like resurgence demonstrated by our man Trent on [With_Teeth]; a beautiful record that we both loved so much it made us sick.

E-mails were sent, long lost friends were joyously reunited, and so it was that the Nine Inch Nails flame was rekindled in their hearts with a new brightness. Hallelujah!

There is no word in English to describe our anticipation of the tour that would follow, but compulsive personal exigence required us to know every single detail of news breaking from within the Empire of Dirt. That exigence led us to a fateful encounter with Nine Inch Nails themed messageboard Echoing The Sound, where we discovered something shocking: Nine Inch Nails fans are almost relentlessly retarded, mean-spirited, ass-licking, puritanical and fascistic. From the endless, dunderheaded analyses of song lyrics, to the ritual humiliation of girls who love Trent, and abject mediocrity of the poetry published by forum members in the "creative" section, we were shocked to find that a work of art so marked by intelligence, real depth, and a surprising subtlety could spawn a fanbase that spectacularly moronic.

One fine day, while we waited in line for an embarrassing amount of time to see the one artist for whom either of us would suffer such a thing, we hatched a plan. How could we let the steam off of our own hilariously intense fascination with the collected works of Trent Reznor, while simultaneously taking the piss out of ourselves and that guy with the full-on frankenbuckle costume in line in front of us? How could we avow our own undeniably burning desire to be on the rails for the Nine Inch Nails club date while satirizing the mentality of that one girl who, in addition to sleeping on concrete at the venue for three days, was bristlingly willing to threaten others with physical violence for daring to come between her and her worship of Trent Reznor's shiny new muscles? Oh, hi Violent 'n' Delicious! You are a total bitch!

Thus, WearingTheseChains.com was born: the website of Gabriel Miller and Dierdre Keating, Nine Inch Nails fans extraordinaire.

Who are Gabriel and Dierdre really? Like, in real life?

Briefly, "Gabriel" and "Dierdre" are both professional writers. The author of Gabriel's schizo insanity and totally brilliantly awful poetry is a fiction writer and musician, and the author of Dierdre's nutbag Quixotic love and incisive photo essays is a journalist and photographer.

What about Mimi? How did the French epicure with the golden pen get involved?

The genius who writes Mimi was one of the few sharp-witted members of the ETS community (yes, there are some!) who saw us, early on, for what we were: satirists and chain-yankers. She thought our little jokes were funny, and wrote to tell us so. Before long, we felt like pretending to be Gabriel and Dierdre full-time was disingenuous, and cramped our ability to get to know a really cool girl better, so we told her our little secret. She was delighted. We invited her to contribute.

Obviously, we all agreed that no satire fan-site could ever be complete without totally ludicrous fanfic, and "Mimi" found herself more than equal to the challenge. I think we can all agree that she is one hilarious Frenchie. If you haven't read "Jerome The Vampire" yet, I really suggest that you get on it, because it fucking kills.

How old are you guys?

That depends on whether you mean Gabriel, Dierdre and Mimi, or US, the real people who write them. Gabriel is 23, Dierdre and Mimi are 22. If you mean the "real us," we were late college age in 1994. You do the math.

Did you really start this website to satirize and yank the chains of Nine Inch Nails fans to previously undreamt-of success?

Yes. We totally did.

Awesomely, we so enraged the brass at ETS that they gave us special "Carol Reznor" status, filtered our names, substituting their every appearance with words denoting sex toys and gynecological conditions, and endlessly flamed, derided and had at us for months, thus playing into our hands with a relish that continually surprised and delighted us. Oh, how we laughed! Finally, they banned us from playing in their sandbox. We couldn't have been more delighted.

Our crowning achievement, however, was when an entire column of Ninternet staple "The Meathead Perspective" was dedicated to telling us how deeply reviled we are. Using characteristically colorful terms, Meathead fumed and ranted, and then wore one of our shirts to the Nine Inch Nails show in Wilkes-Barre, PA, with [Wearing_These_Chains] crossed-out, and [FUCK] scrawled above it in black magic marker. There is no way that we could have SCRIPTED a more hilarious response to our website. We literally rolled with laughter and pleasure.

To this day, other than the shirts we bought for ourselves, Meathead has been our only t-shirt customer. How awesome is that?

That's so mean! Did you really hate Meathead?

No. Absolutely not. What's to hate? In fact,  we all loved his column, which featured spot on send-ups of the Trent Reznor mystique, and Nine Inch Nails fans' enslavement to it, for years. We loved the way he took the piss out of it all with obvious love and affection. However, we also both agree that, recently, "The Meathead Perspective" had been holdin' on too tight, and had lost the edge.

We thought Gabriel's totally ludicrous rant about how "MEATHEAD SUCKS NOW" would be over-the-top enough to be clearly A JOKE, but we also thought people might laugh about it that time when Gabriel wrote poems to Trent's microphone and shiny pants, and Dierdre purportedly saved Trent's hair in her mouth to clone him later, and waxed lyrical about that time when she touched his nipple in London. Personally, we thought Mimi's fanfic, in which crack-house Trent breaks a supermodel's nose, and knows the taste of his own spunk was fucking hilarious, but that could just be our whacked out sense of humor. I guess it's never wise to over-estimate the discernment of one's readers.

When we're feeling generous, we're still stumped, as to whether Meathead cleverly got our joke, and returned the silly venom in kind, or really and truly got all mad.  Sadly, we suspect that he actually got mad, and we must say that the terms in which he reviled us are not a very flattering portrait of him. But, as Dierdre would say, WHATEVS. He's tough. He can take it.

Either way, it's been hilarious, and I do hope Meathead will accept our heartfelt thanks for all of his help in making our silly website NINternet famous, which we now extend.

So your time at ETS certainly takes on a different color now. What was your favorite moment at Echoing the Sound?

G here -- it's hard to say. We had a lot of exchanges that were pretty priceless, from the reactions to the various L'orangerie Stank releases, to the overwhelming frustration we elicited from everyone in the shitlist by simply not going away no matter how many third grade stunts they pulled (yes, I'm talking to you, Orestes!)

But I think my favorite moment came courtesy of Eugenie de Franval:

i call extreme bullshit on pclare. you are trying to tell me that there is some type of sophisticated satire going on here that we are just not getting? or is it, by your estimation, we are supposed to appreciate humor that is not funny and in bad bad taste. this is all your supposition, of course, gabriel/dierdre haven't gotten to the level of desperation where they start claiming they were "just kidding". but how does any of what you just posted make even a scintilla of sense?

in essence, you are saying that these swifties have it all over us, because we are mocking their bogus blog which is weak and unfunny.

pclare, all of what they are doing and your "criticism" runs completely opposite the entire meaning of the word, satire. satire is where one mocks the afflicted. that is what we are doing.

Yes, my dear Eugenie, a sophisticated satire that you were not getting is precisely what was going on. And the type of afflicted being mocked, my dear, was you.

And though I know you had a fun spell as Jesus on ETS -- of "Hi PCLARE!!!!!" fame -- please take this as notice that PClare knew the score on this one from the get-go, and even tried to tell you as much... but you couldn't see past yourself.

One thing WTC has taught us, my friends, is that you can't fix stupid.

Are you nothing but a bunch of ironic, cooler-than-thou, lying hipster bitches?

Yes and no. Two of us lived in Hollywood for years and years, and unfortunately, ironic hipster bitchery is contagious there. We may be guilty of it in some respects.

However, one thing that all of us are totally unironic about is the fact that we love art, literature, and music, more than anything, and the collected works of Trent Reznor rank amongst our favorites ever. One thing we are totally not lying about is that we will always be grateful to Trent Reznor for the things his work has shown and given us in the most squeamishly sincere way possible; a way that makes the ironic hipster part of us go "Eeeew!" All of us truly believe in the power of art to explain us to ourselves, and to change people, so we take it pretty fucking seriously. Mixed in with all the silliness on WearingTheseChains.com are moments when we have been more truthful than we really care to admit.

So, yes, we are bitches; and also, yes, our love is real, embarrassingly serious, and utterly geektastic. We savor it proudly.

So, let me get this straight: I've been reading WTC since it started, and I thought Dierdre, Gabriel and Mimi were real! Were you totally making fun of me? Do you think I'm a retarded, mean-spirited, ass-licking, puritanical, fascistic loser who is worthy of satire?

Honey, we are ALL worthy of satire, but as for all that mean stuff, no! A thousand times no! We love you, dear readers. We think you are the bees knees! We love the way haiku wars spontaneously erupt in our comments, and we have seriously enjoyed the many interesting, intelligent conversations about the work of art we all love that have taken place on our pages. We have had our moments of thinking "Holy Fucking Jesus, is s/he fucking kidding?!" with each of you, but at the end of the day, we have found you to be sweetly sincere, lovely creatures and we adore you. Most of all, we love the way you let your freak flags fly.

Moreover, and more importantly, we think there are more legitimate responses to a genuinely affecting work of art like the one Trent Reznor has wrought than are dreamt of by the administrators of messageboards who are inhibited by their desire to seem cool, detached, uninvested, unmoved, and not sexually aroused by a man in tight, shiny pants who regularly shows us his heart so effectively. People who spend what I can only assume are hours and hours, for YEARS, painting that picture on a NINE INCH NAILS MESSAGEBOARD.

As much as we wanted to yank a few chains, we also wanted to create a space where people felt free to be honest and say the things that are so verboten elsewhere. It's disappointing to us that an artist who made his place in our hearts so permanently by saying all those things he shouldn't say, and by ferociously avowing and insisting on the validity of his own truth, regardless of how embarrassing or transgressive it might seem to everyone else, should inspire his fans to be so intolerant of one another, but alas, it is so. That is not true on WearingTheseChains.com. Everyone is welcome, and no one will ever be banned. [I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but I'll ban whomever I want -- and you're first, Keating. --Gabriel]

As silly as WearingTheseChains.com sometimes is, if I may make so bold as to say so, the strength of it has always been that it is salted with absolute sincerity and moments of completely unalloyed seriousness. We aren't ALWAYS kidding. But, to our dear regular readers and commentors, please know that we adore you, and don't be angry at us for having you on!

Finally...

We Love The Pain!

Best Regards on behalf of all of us at WTC HQ,
Dierdre Keating & Gabriel Miller

PS. If you have any other questions, bring 'em on, hosers.