How can Chris Brown make so many unforgivable mistakes and still be forging ahead?

One of the reasons why it’s easy for bad people to make good music— and for listeners to be okay with that— is due to changes in technology and the way we engage with the artists we like. As recently as a decade ago, in order to purchase music you needed to physically walk into a store and buy it. Consider the social ramifications of walking up to a register with an R. Kelly CD a week after he was brought up on charges of child molestation. Then, what might your friends think about you if they saw it sitting in your CD rack? You’re a monster for supporting that monster! When music was physical, it was fashionable. What you listened to was a part of your identity. To own something, to physically have it in your possession, was to align yourself with it completely. Like carrying a Celine bag or driving Tesla, your music collection said you were this kind of person. When your tastes changed, you changed.

Now, there is far less commitment involved with the listening experience, so enjoying the music of someone whose politics and actions you may not agree with carries less weight. In fact, with the rise of music streaming, you don’t even own anything, so there isn’t this sense of emotional attachment to the artist or the song itself. You don’t go anywhere to get it. You don’t pay anything for it. There’s no real investment of your time involved with even engaging with it. It’s disposable. It’s in the cloud. It’s always there. There’s no changing taste. It’s every taste, all the time. And unless you’re broadcasting your activity on social media, it’s largely anonymous. In the quiet of your bedroom, with nobody watching you, you go to YouTube and watch a Chris Brown video. You may think he’s a womanizer, but if you find yourself liking the song, who is going to judge you for that? Nobody, because nobody knows. Maybe you won’t tweet about it, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t listening. And when it’s in a social setting, nobody really cares whether music is made by good or bad people. They just care that it’s enjoyable. A DJ isn’t stopping a party because you think an artist’s actions are ‘problematic.’ Is the record hot? If so, party on Wayne.

There’s also been a meteoric rise of enjoying things in ironic ways. We are at least ten years into a counter-cultural movement that is post-music, post-quality, post-seriousness. We’ve become so spoiled with the cleanliness of what digital technology affords us, that it’s become boring. Consequently, we’re looking for imperfection, finding things to engage with simply because they are awful. We used to think, perhaps naively, that you needed to be fairly skilled to make it in music. But now, unskilled is the new skilled. Virtuosity implies mastery, and to master something means that there is no journey left. There’s no story developing there. It has already developed. There’s nothing to rally behind; rather, we can just stand there and cheer. That doesn’t lend itself to how we engage with content today. So, we don’t talk about things because they are good. We talk about things because they are terrible. In terrible things, we see struggle, and in struggle, we see ourselves. Amateurs, playing around, hoping someone notices. Rarely do we share professionally-produced videos and comment on how expertly-directed they are. The ones that invite comment are the ones that look like shit.

To wit, Miley Cyrus made far better music — great songwriting, professionally-polished production — when she was a teen Disney star. But nobody would call Miley Cyrus interesting back then. There was nothing to talk about. No story there. She made good music, case closed! It wasn’t until she added a few wrinkles to the equation — a little cultural appropriation here, some drug use there — that we decided she was worth discussing in some type of larger context. For her part, Rihanna has had numerous hit records, but its her usage of social media, where she’s both curt and outspoken, that keeps us attracted to her these days. Similarly, Bobby Shmurda is rap’s new ‘it’ boy, but he didn’t sign a record deal with Epic Records worth more than $1 million because he can rap well. He signed because he did a dance on Vine that people thought was funny and decided was worth sharing. Riff Raff, one of the more polarizing figures in music today, attained fame based on the simple fact that people were sending his videos to friends like, “Is this guy serious?”

When you add irony to the collapse of the media business built around physically owning shiny plastic discs, plus a dash of music becoming this highly-solitary experience—think about the person on the train, a pair of Beats by Dre nestled comfortably around their ears—anything bad can be good. You can douse off criticism of your listening habits under the guise of being unique or authentic or whatever the hell marketers are using to sell to young people these days. To that effect, you might listen to Chris Brown or Kanye or deadmau5 just for the simple fact that other people aren’t. Contrarianism has never been more popular. And with the conversation around these acts being so negative, it’s easy to align yourself with them as a veritable ‘fuck you’ to the establishment. Liking shit nobody else likes is as rock n’ roll as it gets. That’s youth culture in a nutshell.