Still think GMOs and vaccines etc are not dumbing down the population? Then explain to me what is. Something is.
Info Wars, Red State, WND, Vox, Twitter, PR companies, intersectionalists, various religious groups.
I think there is a lot to that part. And it is not just those fringe and obviously slanted sources. I'd say Fox News, CNN, and the other information behemoths do their part to dumb down everyone, too. Critical thinking takes a lot of mental energy. For better or worse, it used to be that there were a very limited number of news sources, and they were heavily vetted. Thus, most everyone got the same reasonably sensible information, and that was that. Sure, there were problems there, but the news sources were trusted. And, since there were so few of them, they were loathe to do anything to break that trust. I'm not saying that was ideal. But, overall, it was more efficient at distributing approved information, and shaping consensus than what we have now. And it was against that type of background that our trust in a free press was founded.
Now, there are more news sources than anyone can even keep track of on a daily basis, let alone actually read or vet. And trust is granted by a popularity contest, rather than from an honest assessment of the quality of reporting. Factual content doesn't really matter. Popularity is king.
Sure, there may be some facts mixed in there, somewhere. But they are secondary to what can drive popularity.
So, if you actually are one of the few people who are concerned about things like facts, you have to read all the multiple and conflicting sources. And then you usually have to carefully paint out what
isn't being said, and work backwards to find the pieces of truly relevant information that no one wants to talk about. It's quite a bit of work. Most people don't really care enough to do that. Hell, except for a couple topics,
I usually don't care enough to do that, either.
In the face of this problem, people usually just pick a popular source that once said something they agreed with, and then just parrot everything from that source, without ever really considering the sanity of what they're saying. Who needs to think about it? They once said something I agreed with, so there is at least one fact. And they're really popular, therefore everything else must all be ok, too. Or else it wouldn't be so popular, would it?