Less boring: you are speaking as if you necessarily have an accurate read on the situation, when actually you are heavily speculating, necessarily.

There's a reason propaganda and misinformation works so well on all citizens, "smart" or "dumb": the "advanced" skills needed to cut through it are not taught in our culture, in the era we find ourselves in, so these skills are largely nonexistent in the wild.

This could be changed, as literacy rates and many other things were back when we cared about such things.