I've probably come so late to this thread that I'm going to repeat several points, but I'll take the chance. I agree "pussified" is a horribly ineffective term. At the risk of sounding like a hipster, you might find "conformist" more applicable.
My perspective is that mainstream music does still challenge social norms, it's just that we're a more tolerant society now with globalization and communication technologies (i.e., the interwebs) and we've been exposed to a lot more things so shock value is greatly reduced.
Being part of online music community ourselves, we probably don't even recognize some of the social norms we feel completely justified demolishing on a daily basis, so our judgment of mainstream music (which appeals to the lowest common denominators of a particular listening demograph) is going to be pretty harsh.
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