A great number of celebrities have found Twitter is a great way to communicate directly with the public, without filtering by the news media or a record company. In Reznor's case, his fan base consisted of a few too many angry, depressed people to make Twitter a pleasant experience.

It turns out the industrial rocker's fans weren't too happy when he started Twittering about the joys of being in love. And so he warned that he was going quit the Internet: "You are right, I'm not the same person I was in 1994 (and I'm happy about that). Are you?"

Rather than fade away as Dave Matthews seems to be doing, Reznor followed up on his threat by just cold deleting his account sometime within the past few days (he posted as recently as July 17). Which is especially startling since Reznor has been a pioneer in using the internet to distribute his music and connect with fans. He's now discovered that it's possible to connect too closely — and unlike internet fameballers trying to convert online fame into real celebrity, he doesn't have to pretend otherwise.

The concept is for you to take whatever tracks you feel inspired by from Ghosts and create what you feel should accompany them visually. You will be able to see all of the submissions, and a team of us (including me) will be sorting through them and setting aside ones we feel are exceptional. Eventually (within a couple of months?) we will present a virtual "film festival" with me and some special guests presenting selections of your work.

Don't get your hopes up for prize hardware or other material glory, Reznor adds; the most you can win is some schlubby YouTube love and maybe, if you're lucky, a spot in the backdrop at a one-time-only NIN performance of Ghosts. But the more ambitious among you can always take solace in your role as a grass-roots shill pushing the phenomenon as far into the dyed black as it can go, with only a couple hundred grainy cell-phone movies, some musty, goth-chick nostalgia and Mark Romanek's all-time great "Closer" video standing between you and cinematic immortality. Or you could always, you know, just watchalong with the rest of us. We're just saying.

• Ghosts Film Festival [Nine Inch Nails]