It’s no secret that Trapt or, more specifically, Chris Taylor Brown, vocalist of Trapt who decided to commandeer the band’s Twitter account has been in the headlines on a regular basis, sparking Twitter feuds with the likes of Tilian of Dance Gavin Dance, Silent Planet, and even Ice T. It seems like every day, there’s a new band in the crosshairs that gets an earful from the band. What exactly does this accomplish, and why is it still going on after a month?

There are a few theories in my mind. First and foremost, did the band even cross anyone’s mind before this controversy? Sure, most of us heard “Headstrong” back in the early 2000’s, but Trapt could never repeat its success fading into obscurity soon after. There were very few other singles that came anywhere close to that track. With tons of significant, currently-relevant bands being bullied, it feels like everyone has Trapt in their digital mouth.

The band’s last album DNA, dropped in 2016, peaking at spot 148 on the Billboard top 200. The targets of Trapt’s ire tend to chart quite a bit better than that, so I suspect some jealousy is at play. Chris loves to fall back on the band’s “Pandora plays,” a statistic that is highly moot considering the diminished usage of the app after the rise of Spotify. While Trapt does have some high numbers on Spotify, the differential between “Headstrong” and other songs is astronomical, invalidating any weight this argument holds.

Could this be a bit of word-of-mouth ahead of Trapt’s 2020 album? As some may say, “there’s no such thing as bad press.” Quite often, reputations are forgiven and forgotten in mass media, as 15 minutes of shame can occur before a neutral opinion returns. Personally, I don’t think that’ll be the case for Trapt, as this charade has gone on way past 15 minutes. I’m sure a lot of people, myself included, are growing tired of seeing the word “Trapt” on the internet.

stop giving @TRAPTOFFICIAL attention

— wasted x queen (@flowerxfish) April 20, 2020

The implications of this ongoing campaign are farther reaching than Chris may think. People associate Chris’ words with Trapt as the tweets are coming straight from the band’s Twitter and not Chris’ personal profile, as the platform reach is quite larger in the former. So what about the other members of the band? Do they want to be associated with this? It took several weeks for Chris to add “account run by CTB” as a disclaimer, even though he’s been speaking in the first person from the get-go.

If one thing is uniting people in these troubling times, it’s that we can all condemn Chris for his hateful words and trite tirades. The like differentials in Twitter threads featuring Trapt and their victims show an outpouring of support towards the latter in every case. This is an unprecedented case of a frustrated musician using his privilege to display agendas and “take on anyone” that may disagree without precedence. Let’s hope Chris Taylor Brown eventually runs out of steam so we can get more positivity in our Twitter feeds instead of seeing “TRAPTOFFICIAL” every few hours.

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