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Nobody was advertising Doom or rap to children, or if they did it was with the faintest of plausible deniabiltiy. Whenever there was some media firestorm over kids consuming 'inappropriate' content, the creators would perfunctorily gesture towards the ESRB rating system or parental advisory labels. The culture of days old was hidden from your parents, not championed as good medicine by media and its authority figures (official or otherwise). You hid the M-rated game from your Mom, and you didn't pop Eminem into your parents' car stereo on the way home from your school. If the opposite was the case, other families thought it was strange if they found out. There was - for lack of a better word - shame, feigned or otherwise, around letting your kids wildly consume subject matter above their intended age range.
I'm not sure what youth culture is into these days, partly because times do change, partly because it's hard to separate a clear signal from all the 'modern audience' astroturfing. But I find it hard to believe that the current environment - laid on thick by a PMC class of 30-somethings and older, still steeped in yesteryear's cultural battles - is a genuine, undistorted expression of the real thing. You had to overcome some barriers to reach the naturally-alluring experience of shotgunning demons to bloody ribbons in your favorite heavy metal album cover. Who today has to seek out or hide away woke content, as opposed to having it dumptrucked into their mouth by Disney or similar?
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