I wanna Tweet you like an animal.

Okay.

Originally, I wasn't gonna make a big deal out this.

Partially because it involves two of my most beloved teenage idols. Partially because I don't wanna turn this blog into a chronicle of celebrity smackdowns.

But, damn it. There's something fascinating about this one to me.

So Nine Inch Nails chairman Trent Reznor (who has been on the cover of AP something like 431 times, almost all between the months of December 1993 and April 1994) wrote on his Twitter account last week that he's far from a fan of the new Chris Cornell solo album, Scream. Reznor said in 140 characters or less, "You know that feeling you get when somebody embarrasses themselves so badly YOU feel uncomfortable? Heard Chris Cornell's record? Jesus."

Cornell retweeted fire with this: "What do you think Jesus would twitter? "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Has anyone seen Judas? He was here a minute ago."

First of all, in the off chance that either masters Reznor or Cornell are reading this, I want you both to know that I literally have framed pictures of both of you in my apartment and I owe 86 percent of my former teenage angst to you--angst that I rolled over into a marginally lucrative career as a music editor.

But I kind of agree with Reznor. Look, when Cornell released his first solo album, Euphoria Morning, in 1999, I definitely spent $42.99 on a Japanese import just to get the B-side of "Nowhere But You." But for Scream, Cornell turned to Justin Timberlake's boy Timbaland to produce.

This collaboration led to an album that makes my 15-year-old self weep for even more reasons that I'll never understand and to photo ops like this:

In this picture Cornell looks a lot like at least two of my uncles. So I can't stay mad at him. But Reznor was onto something.

But here's the most disturbing part of this whole ugly situation: It's clear now that Twitter is yet another venue where whatever you say will inevitably come back to haunt you. It's a legitimate information source. I mean, each Tweet serves as a source for news on websites from here to Ashley Tisdale.

Hell, even I used Tweets as direct quotes. And that in and of itself is a sentence I wouldn't even have understood 16 months ago.

I guess the thing we can all learn is this: Instant gratification micro-blogging cannot be used for evil.

Do we really all want to get sucked into these cyber-wars where we're sniping and undermining each other through crazy-advanced technological devices?

George Orwell would be saying, "I told you so" while sipping his vanilla hazelnut chai latte and perusing TMZ.

(Perhaps this isn't the best time to mention it, but follow me at http://twitter.com/TimKaran.)