User blog comment:BlittleMcNilsen/RANT: Kids being exposed to crap/@comment-4295646-20111223101142/@comment-4295646-20111224193431

@Zalgopasta: Well. Yeah. SOPA actually being a viable piece of legislation is a new development, and one that really doesn't fit the trend of the last ten years or so. It feels like the rebound of a pulled spring - a violently reactionary fuck-you to the way the internet operates today. Like whoever's claiming damage from it (and has the power to influence Congressional matters) is attempting to make up for lost time.

That said, the internet is only one of the forms of media I was broadly talking about. I'm not sure what point you mean to make by bringing up Rocko and Ren, since those ended fifteen or twenty years ago. >_>;; Is there some recent development I hadn't heard of? I was thinking of, say, how Cartoon Network has a block of semi-adult programming intended to bridge the gap between their standard kids' shows and [as]. And there's an animated show in Ireland called Punky, where the protagonist is depicted positively as living with Down syndrome. And literature for children and tweens can now (sort of) safely address issues like homosexuality and gender identity. Not all of these are politically incorrect, but they can definitely be seen as "unsafe". Some have been plugging away for much longer than the period I'm talking about, too. (Sorry I can't cite any specific facts or data right now, lol. These are mostly observations.)

But anyway. "Media" is a big fat amorphous term, and trends thereof don't always line up the same way at the same time. However, they're all informed by shifts in cultural values, which I'd say have been tending towards greater tolerance of edgy material.