The blogosphere had a field day with this image below. It was the industrial metal band Nine Inch Nails performing with what appeared to be a Windows blue screen of death crash on the backdrop screens.
Everyone was calling it “NINE INCH FAIL,” as the word “Fail” has come into vogue for being used as a noun these days. There’s a whole site, run by the I Can Has Cheezburger folks I profiled last year, called Failblog, with some real spit-on-the-monitor-inducing pictures and videos.
Turns out NIN frontman Trent Reznor got the drop on a lot of people. Reznor is very computer-savvy. He did the ambient music soundtrack for id Software’s game Quake back in 1995, way before it became fashionable for bands to include their music in videogames.
Turns out the BSOD is part of the show, not an accidental crash. As Gizmodo first noted, Reznor is a die-hard Mac user, and this was a way of poking fun at Microsoft and giving the audience a chuckle at the same time.
He may have a head like a hole but he’s also got a great sense of humor.