Heres what happened yesterday.

Basically, someone found Cassie's profile and saw that she was a genuine person who deserved to win.

Sure, she's not size zero, she doesn't have a radio show or a contract with a modelling agency but she did have one thing... she was a genuine fan who showed a modest but real desire to meet her hero.

Emails started to circulate, forums and message boards were introduced to her page, and bit by bit, Cassie's following developed. Some of the biggest, most influential web communities joined the fight, including ebaumsworld forums, somethingawful forums, and b3ta.com to name a few.

By this time Cassie was gaining a steady stream of genuine votes, around 1000-2000 per hour.

...and then... the chans joined in!

Unfortunately, The chans mostly consist of 12 year olds and older people who like to act like 12 year olds. They only wanted the instant gratification of watching a few small digits on Cassie's page increase in value. They decided to join the cause not by voting once per day but by using hackers tools to constantly submit multiple votes.

By this time Cassie was gaining around 10,000 votes every 15 minutes.

And then... and then...

And then MTV showed their hand. Their hand was clad in the slimiest, most cynical cloth... the cloth is called "we-dont-give-a-f!@#".

So what do we make of all this?

Well, MTV have shown themselves for who they really are. They claim to be the voice of youth, they claim to be a stage for new ideas... but only if you're a wannabe model/media whore with perfect teeth and a wardrobe full of D&G.

They don't care who the winner is as long as they're attractive, as long as they have a face for advertising.

And the saddest thing is, for girls and young women especially, the pressure to look perfect in an imperfect world - full of Photoshopped stars on magazine covers, pop singers who would fit through a letter box - is immense. Just how can any young lady compete with celebrities with digitally reduced cellulite and digitally enhanced whiter-than-white teeth?

They can't.

All MTV has done over the past 24 hours is added to this weight of synthetic rubbish pushing down on the shoulders of young women. They don't care if teenage girls are driven half way to insanity while trying fruitlessly to emulate their celebrity heroes.

MTV wants us to be intelligent, individual people with our own personal quirks and imperfections... just not on their godforsaken channel.

Shame on you MTV.

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