Much ado about nothing

I know way too much about people I don't know anything about.
Know what I mean?
OK, maybe that's not as clear as it seemed in my head. So, an example.
Take Anna Nicole Smith. I have never in my life made even the smallest effort to know more about Anna Nicole Smith. And yet I know she married some rich old dude. I know she died of a drug overdose and I know roughly a third of the world's male population claimed to have fathered her child. I don't know why I know this. I don't want to know this. And yet there all that information is, taking up space in my brain that could otherwise be occupied with things like the best way to grill a hamburger or an idea for a movie script that will make me millions. If the knowledge has to be Anna Nicole-related, couldn't it at least be something like the date when she first appeared in Playboy? That's information I could use.
Or, take Paris Hilton. I'm still not even clear why anyone knows who she is (something to do with a home movie?) and yet I know she went back to jail recently, and I know she was crying when she went. I know this at least in part because Newsweek dedicated most of a page to telling me about it.
I know Lindsay Lohan held a knife to a friend's throat. I know Nicole Richie is so thin it looks like someone wrapped a blanket around a coat rack. And I know Britney Spears has as much chance of getting through rehab successfully as I have getting Britney Spears' phone number. Fortunately, I also know enough about Britney Spears and her decline from the days when men around the world were having criminally lustful thoughts about her that I probably wouldn't want her phone number anyway.
Everyone wins, I guess.
These days, thanks the increasing options for sharing information with the world, it's not just the inexplicably famous I know way too much about. I also know far more than I care to about the explicably non-famous.
I realize that as a person who dedicates 600-some words each week to telling people whatever inane thought is on my mind (how I know too much about people, for example) I'm on shaky footing when I come out against blogs, but I'm doing it anyway. I know people I have blogs, or web logs. I read one regularly to keep track of a former co-worker who has since moved out of the state. But that's it. I don't need to know what some dude in Milwaukee thinks about the latest episode of American Idol, or about what some lonely blogger's cats did that was really cute.
Full disclosure: I made a page on MySpace, a social networking site where teenage girls and aspiring musicians share intimate details of their lives. I did it because I wanted to see if I could locate any long lost friends. I abandoned it almost immediately because I don't need the world to know my favorite color (It's blue!) or favorite band (At the moment it's the Hold Steady!) or my favorite kind of soup (I don't eat soup much!).
By the way, if you want to check any of this later, you can read this column on the Town Pages blog, areavoices.com/townpages. Oh, the irony.
Blogs are just the beginning, though. A new program called Twitter lets people provide instant updates via cell phone to tell people exactly where they are at any given moment. Sites like flickr let people share their photos with the world.
A recent study by five psychologists, led by San Diego State professor Jean Twenge, found that college students today are more self-centered than at any time since 1982. Twenge suggests that is due at least in part to the growth of technology like MySpace and YouTube. Young people assume that the fact they can share the intimate details of their life — or at least videos of them getting hit in the crotch — means other people are actually interested in those details.
We're not, of course. Unless knowing some random college student in Portland is a terrible dancer and has no shame can help me forget Paris Hilton has a dog named Tinkerbell. Then it might be worth it.