How can it be?

How can so many people be so incredibly self-indulgent? I mean, I have to include myself among the navel-gazing masses, as here I sit pecking away at my laptop from within this community of navel gazers... but really.  I browsed a few of the other blogs on here.  Are there really people out there who would care what songs come up in which order on my ipod?  Can this really foster a sense of "community" somehow?  And what would it say about me were I to post this list... that I belive my musical taste is somehow noteworthy to the extent other people should be made aware of what I am listening to at any particular moment?  How could that possibly matter to anyone else, in the grand scheme of things?

I heard somewhere that the average american today processes as much information in 24 hours as someone 100 years ago processed in a lifetime.  That seems plausible, I guess... but how much of that information today is useless.  People used to know how to make things, how to build houses and grow food and whatnot.  Today we know that someone we've never met is currently playing a song we never heard of on their ipod.