According to Devin Tuffy, who was there at the time, what might be the single most enduring local phenomenon in alt.music.nin's history came from...another newsgroup. Some time in early 1993, a poster to rec.music.industrial (plainly weary of the ongoing NIN discussions in that group) commented -- in reference to another, unidentified album --

"You guys should care about this more
than you care about the hidden tracks on
NIN's Buttfuck Parlour Time CD."

In characteristic fashion, NINnies adopted this brutal insult as a badge of honor and began inventing bogus "bonus" tracks carrying "BFPT" numbers. Many of these fabrications were parodies of existing songs, but some were parodies of other artists' material using roughly NIN-related themes, or simply elaborate tall tales about lost sessions, secret collaborations, and future albums.

Although the original "BFPT" comment plainly refers to halo 5, the poster's reasons for fixating on the "fist fuck" reference in the second track remain a mystery. And going into it here can only lead to a discussion of the use on a.m.nin of the word "fist" as a verb, which is a separate phenomenon and beyond the scope of this anecdote.

hope and vaseline -- hnv@nin.net