Comment: "We can plant a house, we can build a tree."

Listening to Nirvana is a fascinating experience. What do you think about when you listen to it, if, indeed, you do? Are you making videos starring yourself? Remembering actual videos you’ve seen? Just rocking out and not really thinking about anything? Regretting something you did at a party in college? Wondering why Kurt Cobain couldn’t get better help for his raging depression?

I mean, come on, just listen to the guy and tell me he wasn’t totally messed up. He was a good example of tortured brilliance. But he didn’t get to enjoy his fame. In fact, he probably hated it. I’m not sure fame is a great thing for anyone, especially someone with extreme mood swings. Too much of your life is public these days, and there is literally nowhere to hide. I remember not that long before he committed suicide, seeing the cover of Rolling Stone (or possibly Spin) where Nirvana graced the cover. And the headline was: “Cobain: ‘Success Doesn’t Suck’”.

But I think it probably did.

Nobody needs to be examined all of the time by complete strangers, and yet that is what many of us are doing on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube. None of these things existed when Cobain was alive. What would he think of these things if he were still alive today? I think he would probably have mocked them and either totally eschewed them or made up fake identities so he could skulk around the zeitgeist unnoticed.

As I’ve mentioned many a time here, I am ragingly ambivalent about Facebook and all these applications that tell everyone what you’re doing. On the one hand, it connects you to people, which is, in general, a good thing. But it also encourages massive navel-gazing, which is not necessarily always the best use of your time.

I suppose blogs are the same way, though. If they’re not personal navel-gazing, they’re gazing at politicians’ or celebrities’ navels. It all comes out to cheap voyeurism that, in small doses, doesn’t appear to be a problem.

By the time my kids are old enough to get on Facebook, (and it isn’t that long) what will they do with their profiles? Will they tell everyone every detail of their day? (No wait, that’s Twitter. Whatever, you know what I mean.) Will they live their social life electronically, never leaving the couch? Frankly that scares me a little. Okay, a lot.

Again, I’m not trying to say that Facebook is BAD, it isn’t. Sometimes it’s the only adult contact I get all day. I guess it all comes down to moderation. How much time do you spend online versus the time you spend in person with real live people who have odors and opinions you can hear and quirks you can mock in person?

I’m just sayin’.