well, "cool" is too subjective to really say much, especially when only thinking on a micro level. I think a better phrasing of that is that "dumbness" is being more mainstream today (in the US) than before. Some states are back to banning more books than ever in schools, the country was split over something as basic as medicine ( a few choosing horse de-wormer over a professionally approved vaccine), etc.

There was always such conspiracy, but never talked about at such a scale. But not too much of this has to do with techies outside of "tech made it easy for conspirators to gather".