I never get anything gore shared to me, but I think it's also because I wouldn't stay friends with anyone who sends me that. I think it's weird that, as a society, we're more OK with violence than sex.

Consider how many people saw the shooting of the Trump supporter storming the capitol or the killing of George Floyd. I can't imagine that level of exposure in 2005 or earlier. And this is just gore; we're not talking about sex (also, we don't have to choose between the two, so I don't understand the dichotomous argument).

You think more people saw the shooting of the Trump supporter or George Floyd than saw images from Desert Storm, 9-11, or school shootings? They are all horrible, but I have seen a lot worse stuff pre-2005 than after.

No, I'm not arguing that more people saw footage of those two incidents versus the universe of gore preceding 2005; rather, I'm arguing that gore is far more prevalent and accessible after 2005 than before. The images that we saw before were generally censored of gore--we saw night-vision imagery of bombs raining down on Baghdad, but we didn't see the actual death. Similarly, we saw the towers fall, but most of the actual death was censored (the worst I can recall were people falling from the towers from such a great distance that they appeared to be specs).