Yeah I gotta say I think we know how that might be.
Was it worse than millenia of unchallengable state-sanctioned bullshit that preceded it?
Before the advent of mass media there was no "unchallengeable state-sanctioned" anything. The was a mix of local news and gossip, word-of-mouth, announcements from the local aristocrat or landlord, and more or less accurate rumours arriving from travellers.
They also had people spreading state policy/thought, too.
Before wide scale monitoring, such as phones, then computers, then internet, massive numbers of people were paid to listen, even in modern times.
Mass media was surely an important change, but our ancestors didn't let things go uncontrolled, for, while all of the above was being done internally, external enemies were spreading propaganda to crush foreign kingdoms.
This sort of stuff has likely been happening since the dawn of humans, two villages rivaling over local hunting grounds or some such.
There was no access to books or personal development. You worked the land, you paid your tithes, and if you were lucky you survived the numerous famines, illnesses, bandit raids, and larger military campaigns, and passed your rented land on to one of your sons.
The big difference between that kind of totalitarianism and the modern kind is the fact that the Church has been replaced a more diverse media. In fact there's less diversity than there appears to be. The liberal tradition means there's at least the possibility of independent thought, but it's less common than it might be.
In the West, non-compliance and failure-to-be-useful are enforced with brutal economic sanctions. But you can at least think about starting a business and having some nominal independence - which wasn't an option in feudal times.
But there's a proselytising corporate monoculture instead of a proselytising religious monoculture [1], and it's very hard for many to imagine that other systems may be possible - never mind better for them.
[1] In many parts of the US, you get both.
The common usage for "the media", "MSM", "the state" and so on just seem like filler folks use to prop up their own ill informed ideas.
Going digital just made this information even easier to transmit faster and farther.
"Poisoned candy myths - Wikipedia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_myths#:~:text....
I'm somewhat young still, so I don't have a large personal memory of the times before The Web.
Perhaps I'm just being too pessimistic, that things could in fact be better again.
I wonder...
Many common narratives are themselves hoxes or scams. Many regulations exist to simply protect the scammers. So I'm not quite sure I agree with your implication. I do however agree that culture was more uniform which could cause the illusion of being taken for a ride a bit more appealing.
As for today, I'm amazed at how few people I know even half as pissed off as I am, so maybe they're all still happily on the ferris wheel too?
The CBC and BBC, for example.