I was watching a Simpsons episode from the 90s called Homer Badman where he takes the babysitter home and there is a gummy candy stuck to her butt and he grabs it off her without touching her butt as she is leaving the car. Long story short there is sensational reporting that mocks shows from that era like Hard Copy or A Current Affair. One of the greatest lines is on a parody of Sally Jesse Raphael where the panel consists of mothers and daughters united in their hatred for Homer Simpson and one lady talks about Homer and breaks down in tears and the host says "there there, your tears say more than any real evidence ever could"
That pretty much sums up the metoo movement. I remember being downvoted in reddit for saying that you can't just take an accusation as the gospel truth especially when they haven't filed any police report and just tweet about something.
I honestly think that the Simpsons could have had at least a mild resurgence if they had mocked that stupid comedian that made the documentary about Apu. What was funny was that a lot of people from India or whose parents were from there had no problem with Apu but they didn't matter, and one guy said when he was little they teased him and called him Apu, but if Apu hadn't existed they would've just called him something else.
Relevant now, and even relevant then. There were plenty of tabloid shows in the late 80s / early 90s that were basically a nightly smear of a "horrible" person. Maybe they were or they weren't, but it was obviously engineered like modern day clickbait to get people (well, women) riled up about it in talking about it the next day and drive ratings, at the expense of risking a lawsuit but most of these small town expose's would never be able to afford the case (which hasn't changed at all, except today people can crowdfund some legal warfare.)
At least back then most sane people automatically tuned out when someone started yacking about last night's A Current Affair. Today with social media and cell phones it's a continual drip of gossip for small minds.
Very true