Dr Boli

"This explains why mad conspiracy theories are mainstream now: an idea that can be entertained only by someone with a limited experience of reality can be entertained by a majority of the people, because most people have only a limited experience of reality. What the phone tells us is more real than what the world outside the screen tells us."

I remember pre-internet, in a place without a lot of newspapers (or literacy) or even much access to radio news. Conspiracy theories out the wazoo. ("Queen Elizabeth has a book that explains this.")

Most information about the wider world came from unreliable sources, e.g. word of mouth. There wasn't much you could do about the news anyway, so its accuracy didn't matter -- a bit like entertainment.

Look for parallels at your own risk.