There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time on Twitter and breathlessly tell everyone that it's great. Apparently it's not useless to them (although I've never used it, and you probably didn't either), and I don't think there are many big downsides to Twitter. (I'm not so sure that the "no harm done" applies to Facebook, in particular wrt privacy.)
A lot of people are breathlessly excited about Lady Gaga. Does her existence improve the world? Maybe, for them. Would they be worse off if they never heard of her? Probably they'd find someone else to be breathless about.
Note that the smaller Freckle/etc apps are the ones people actually pay for.
Are you seriously disputing the ability of music to make people's lives more enjoyable?
By the way, Lady Gaga is something people actually pay for. If I recall right, her personal income was $60M last year. Presumably people paid a lot more than that for her music/entertainment.
I read that as disputing the exclusive ability of any specific performer to make people's lives enjoyable, while all others will not be able to do so.
Before Gaga, people were paying for Madonna. After Gaga, people will be breathlessly excited and pay for someone else. If there was no Gaga, people would be breathlessly excited and pay for someone else yet.
That's exactly what I meant. I love music. I just don't think "people are breathlessly excited about X" means "X is valuable". A lot of people are excited about reality TV.
