I see the "content collapse" as a reversion to the historical norm - for most of human history, the majority of people were illiterate and uneducated, and understood little about global affairs. There was a "thinking class" which included the religious, political, and artistic elite, while everybody else was part of the "working class" - effectively peasants who knew little about the world.

The content collapse threatens to destroy the very foundation of Western democratic society - an intelligent, educated public that understands nuance and participates in civic discussion. Instead, it is creating a situation where the masses are subject to the whims of social media, much like the peasants of former times, who were often caught up in religious trends and various mob-like witch hunts.

What is new about our time, is that in democratic societies, the political elite are no longer part of the "thinking class", by necessity, because they have to win votes. Only in autocratic societies like China and Russia do the political elite tend to still speak like an educated elite. It is striking to note that Vladimir Putin spends a lot of his public time talking about detailed points in history like specific events of WWII or even medieval history (see his recent essay on WWII published in the National Interest). Regardless of whether you agree with his interpretation of history, he often talks like a professor, not a politician. Politicians in democratic countries, by contrast, rarely talk about history in nuanced terms because the public is not interested in "boring" details. The inevitable result is the massive "dumbing down" of politics that we see in our time, as the political elite becomes merged with the masses while tech and corporate elites wield the most power.