There once was a time when you simply listened to musicians for their music. An album was purchased, thrown on the turntable and then the artist was judged by their musical talents alone.

Things don't work like that anymore.

Today, there are so many factors that come into play when a person is determining whether or not they're going to become a fan of a musician, and rarely do any those factors have anything to do with whether or not their music is of quality.

No, our current version of mainstream society (I like to call it "Generation 1.DUMB") "astutely" critiques musicians on the following "high-brow" criteria...

• They take a look at the artist's face and ask themselves... "Is it hot, or NOT hot?"
• They peruse gossip sites that report on their personal lives and ask themselves... "Would I totally party with them, or would I totally NOT party with them?"
• They watch interviews with performers and ask themselves... "Are they douchie, or NOT douchie?"

...The list of ridiculous reasons why a person would prefer one performer over another could fill an idiot box to its brim.

How did our culture reach this realm of such incredible superficialness over a musical medium that, over the course of its storied history, never intended to excite any senses other that what the listener heard with their ears, instead of saw with their eyes?

Many would say MTV is at fault.

While I would agree that MTV has definitely accelerated the dumbing-down of youth culture through its increasingly idiotic and irresponsible programming, I can't solely place the blame on them for scarring the world's appreciation of musical sounds. It wasn't the channel that put a face on the performers, it was the medium in which those mugs were scrutinized that turned many of us into shallow music critics: Television.

During the tipping point of when cable television started to become an entertainment medium everyone was able to enjoy on a daily basis, our culture slowly began to become a panel of celebrity judges. We picked apart every characteristic of an performer's craft to such a detailed degree that an entertainer's actual artistic talents were a by-product of what we really cared about: their looks and personality.

As our superficialness picked up steam, the media then began to realize that their audiences cared more about the personalities of performers instead of their artistry. Once this happened, the shallow shit really hit the fan as entertainment news programs turned our culture's vulture volume up to eleven. Rarely were topics about an artist's actual art ever discussed. Alternatively, during every evening's dinner time, we were force fed reasons to continue being critics of celebrity character, instead of their entertaining compositions. Since then, the mean media machine has never stopped accelerating it's ability to turn many of us into artificial asshats.

It's now painfully obvious that today's mainstream artists are manufactured to be perceived as attractive, personality-filled and, last and certainly least importantly, talented performers - and for this, MTV can definitely be considered the firestarter of so much of our culture's superficial frenzies. But, with that said, we gotta remember that it was television who initially killed the ability to simply be an artist who doesn't also have to worry about being a spectacle. The medium certainly didn't purposely mean to murder the appreciation of artistry, but, when a broadcast engine as influential as TV comes along, our human hands can't help but wrap themselves around the neck of an art-fueled money machine and wrestle out every drop of Soulful substance it previously had in an effort to satisfy the superficial masses.