I felt this
Purple Aki turned out to be real though.
Shock marketing and the release of hyper gory “banned” vhs tapes was a big marketing tactic for music in the early 90s. There’s a great NIN documentary that covers this.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out this rumor was somehow disseminated by labels.
I have a strong feeling that if we were to re-live the 90’s right now we’d quickly realise it wasn’t so “innocent” after all. People just had thicker skin back then and recreational outrage wasn’t really a thing due to how slow news and trends speaded at the age of early internet.
This was a rumor created and disseminated by children. I think that context is pretty important when you’re using it to gauge naivety.