the whole thing brings us back to the "nirvana revolution"
and the answer to your question is simply "no".
i mean there ARE shredders who are recording stuff, and gigging and everything, but only musicians listen to those guys.
i dont believe that anyone from the street will listen to shredding because sometimes it is music which is hard to listen to, and people like simple stuff.
thats why nirvana sucessed so much. it also gave many people the feeling that you dont have to play good to be mega star, and then we have blink 182, and all this crap.
and millions of people around the world who play the guitar, dont want to play the blues, because most of them dont even know it exsist, and they also too lazy to learn how to shredd. so by end they are playing kurt cobain all day long, and think he is the best player ever.