I don’t think it’s so much that people have gotten dumber, there’s always been dumb folk, but the age of social media has made them less fearful of looking stupid.
It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.
There’s also the compounding effect of being able to hear more voices from around the world thanks to the internet.
Every village has an idiot. These days you don’t need to visit the village to run into their idiot.
As I tend to say: before social media every village had a village idiot. Now the village idiots are connected, more easily to find and spreading their lack of knowledge.
There was a ton of stupid conspiracy theories around the whole clones sheep thing back then. I think looking back on that time period (like two decades ago, not one) the dumb conspiracies were forgotten as they didn’t lead to anything outside of fearmongering.
Same for the moon landing, there are still conspiracies that it was all faked.
I never understood the goal of things like denying the moon landings or saying the earth is flat. “Ok, you’re right. Now what?” I especially like that they think NASA is powerful and has a huge budget. Tell that to congress and watch them laugh.
The only thing I can guess is their brains have been fried by dramatized TV shows and movies where plot gives all the relevant information to explain all inconsistencies for a satisfying ending. Sometimes you’re just a person in a cave looking at shadows, trying to find an explanation for everything with the little information you can gather in your life is a waste.
