Two times in one day I read the term doofus which I don't remember having encountered before. Is this word just trending recently or was it always frequently been used before?
No. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=d...
But I know where you're coming from. I have the same deja-vu experience quite often, where I run across some word or topic on multiple (independent) occasions within one day without ever having heard it before. I guess our brains are just biased to notice such situations, whereas encountering a novel word/thing/concept only once occurs too often and thus is boring on its own.
When will the media get that this doesn't work?
It was an entertaining read and likely to get lots of clicks.