The mass acceptance of Kurt Cobain points to the fact that all resistance, sadness, and pain is now relegated to a background condition and is experienced solely as an aesthetic. Cobain made alienation desirable and attractive to mass culture. After Nirvana, disaffection is no longer something to be relieved or feared. This is the final collapse of naturalized emotion and the
flattening of affect.
After the media blitz of this "Gen-X" disposition, even boredom and apathy have lost their authenticity. Self-loathing is now a culturally produced and manufactured product whose emotional depth has been replaced with market value. Opposition to society is being replaced by cynical reason and the ambivalent resignation to benefit from the institutions of capital, even where there is a distaste for it.
