This is because the world has gone soft, mad or completely off the boil.

When Guy Sebastian appeared on the alternative music/youth network on Friday morning to sing live, nothing happened. Nothing. Not only did the ABC studio not collapse in a blasphemous rubble and Sebastian emerge unscathed but the triple j outrage police, always quick to rail against any "impure" musical thought or action were noticeably absent.

Could this what happens when triple j starts playing Beyonce, as it did in April? A sign of weariness from even the most battle-hardened culture warriors? Or is it just that performing a version of Keeping Score by electronic act LDRU, with producer Paces, balanced the cool/uncool ledge enough to let him in the door?

Sebastian is a former Australian Idol winner, an important distinction even though that was more than 10 years ago. While he, along with a handful of others such as Jessica Mauboy, sustained a career from the never respected TV talent show entry path to the business, Sebastian's association with the show long stymied his chances of winning a peer-voted ARIA Award, earned him a career's-worth of sneers and with his continued high sales, almost automatically barred him from being heard on triple j.

Why not on triple j? Because it has long run a policy, hard to define and noticeably inconsistent, that popular works – material that was being played on commercial networks, or could be if commercial radio played many songs – and popular artists would not be played on the youth network.

It's a policy which led to the farcical attempt to have Taylor Swift included in the Hottest 100 by an opportunistic website – rejected because triple j were offended at the very notion it might play the biggest pop star in the world. And the equally ludicrous situation where Beyonce's career-redefining 2013/14 self-titled album, was explicitly blocked from triple j's airways even though it wasn't being played on commercial radio (too dark, too radical, too, well, musical for them) and sounded not that different to a number of artists who were on the playlists at the ABC's too-cool-for-school network.

(That both Swift and Beyonce were women was no doubt a coincidence, surely. For they are honourable men, and women, at the station. After all, we are regularly assured, it is not triple j's fault that the hottest 100 songs of the year, as voted by its listeners, has yet to put up a female winner and struggles to even find a token number of spots in the countdown's upper reaches for women.)

Even if the attitude – which says Tame Impala's New Person, Same Old Mistakes can be played but Rihanna's cover of the same song is verboten - had changed within the station you get the feeling the keyboard warriors and Outraged Of Fitzroy complainants among the listening audience would have blown a gasket at the appalling idea of a song being played purely on its merits as a good song.

That's what happened recently when triple j belatedly recognised Beyonce's "worth" by including tracks from her current album, Lemonade in its playlist. One deeply offended listener posted to Facebook that hearing Beyonce was "ear rape" and remembered fondly "when Alicia Keys was not allowed on triple J because she was considers [sic] too commercial."

With Kanye West and Drake also getting some spins on the station, maybe it was but a small step for radiokind to bring in Sebastian. But now, after Guy, le deluge?

Kylie Minogue? She got on there when being murdered by Nick Cave but struggles to get traction when alive. Jessica Mauboy and Delta Goodrem? Maybe if they hook up with a Flume-type producer and get both masculine and electronic "cred". Dannii Minogue?

Yeah, you're right, That's probably a step too far for anyone.