Definitely the latter, although it probably feeds into a vicious cycle and triggers / encourages similar behaviour from the feeble minded who think what they're seeing is cool and want to repeat it or do it "better". Immigration trends and (d)evolving of culture plays a big part too.
The internet and mobile phone technology allows us to see and hear a lot of things that the media would never cover, which was the only way people came to know about such things up until the early 90s, unless they or someone they knew witnessed the incident in some way. Same as how Getbig has opened our eyes to all the sordid stuff that has been going on in bodybuilding over the years and which we would've never known about from just reading FLEX or MD.