The irony is that there is access to more information than ever before, all at the tips of one's fingers. Historically, that is unprecedented and so, I have to attribute some of the descent to willful ignorance, confirmation bias and sheer laziness.
Chomsky did point out that the average, hard working person has little time or energy to do research or go beyond a sound bit or a short video saying this or that, no matter how spurious the information may be.
I have looked at the manifold conspiracy theory world, (which is going more mainstream than I ever thought it would) and I see a trend towards accepting and believing just about anything now and even fighting over the veracity of it. Now, I respect people's beliefs, but it is my suspicion that, as older, and even organized forms of religion lose their appeal, people are just filling that space in with new, radical and unsubstantiated beliefs in lieu of acquiring the skills and knowledge to discern that and researching things before they accept and adopt that. That applies to the "conveniently" religious and fundamentalists, but I see a much wider scope here.
Taken as a whole, it could also spell a general decline and breakdown of what we call society. I am all for breaking out of the official narrative and that is very important to our freedom and well being, but to replace that with new and questionable belief systems does not support free thinking as much as it contributes to delusional perspectives and that can lead to the fragmentation and dissolution of a culture. Online access can empower and inform us, but it is looking to be a two-edged sword and might end up accelerating the chaos and confusion of a breakdown of any useful and even vital consensus in the long run.
Some forms of commonality, (no matter how far we all diverge on various topics) really is an important consideration here. Without some common ground, this even goes beyond divide and conquer and becomes more like fragment, diffuse and overtake.
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