In a brand new interview with Northern Star, LAMB OF GOD frontman Randy Blythe was asked how he keeps himself grounded and not let social media distort his view of the world. He responded: "For me, I don't have a Facebook account, and as you get bigger and bigger and more and more people start coming to see your band, there is always the ego monster that can creep in if you don't watch it. "I think, fortuitously for myself and my band, we were all already in our 30s when we really started gaining some traction as a band. I think we would not have handled it as well had we been younger in our 20s. But we were already firmly grounded as who we were as people. "I used to have a Twitter [account] where all I would do is wind up arguing with my fans, because it felt like some of them — not all of them; I had a lovely relationship with most of them, but, ah, I didn't like the weird anonymous unaccountability that people had. The way they acted sometimes on Twitter and I am assuming that's the same on Facebook. "I don't even know how Facebook works. I've never looked at Facebook, thank goodness." He continued: "For me and social media right now, I really only have an Instagram and I shoot photos and I use it as a tool to share art. I am not putting photos of my lunch or you won't see selfies. If there is a picture of me, it is a self-portrait that I took for a reason, normally for an interview or something. I try put up pictures that have some artistic merit to them and write with them and try and drive some sort of narrative that might encourage people to think about what they are seeing and maybe think about how they view art and the world. I don't put pictures of me up in scenic places. To me, that just reeks of arrogance. Like, 'Look, here we are in Rome at the Parthenon' — this beautiful ancient thing — 'I better insert myself into it.' That seems narcissistic. Why wouldn't you just take a picture of where you are and enjoy the environment. The only time I take selfies is I will take them and send goofy pictures to my wife. But she's the only one that sees them. Me making a funny face at her, that's what they are good for. "A friend of mine, Bubble, he's in ALL THAT REMAINS, he talks about social media accounts like Instagram: 'I think of it as a person's house. If you walked into someone's house and all you saw was thousands of pictures of them that they had taken of themselves, you would think, 'What a fucking insufferable asshole!'' One or two pictures are okay if it is artistic, but it's not. It is a virtual temple to self. "For me, with a camera and photography, and even with a freakin' iPhone, I'm much more interested in capturing the world around me rather than trying to interject myself into it. There's enough pictures of me already. [Laughs]" LAMB OF GOD is continuing to tour in support of its latest album, "VII: Sturm Und Drang", which was released in July 2015 via Epic in the U.S. and Nuclear Blast Entertainment in all territories outside of North America.
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