One option for the onion is to end being an entertaining opinion journal with very nuanced and layered (intended) points of view. They already are almost there, what place do they have where so many in the media are parodies of themselves ?
You think the world has gotten dumber? By the numbers it’s smarter even if it’s unevenly distributed and less smart than people’s vain sense of cultural identity leads them to believe.
For example; ~15% in the US have earned more than a bachelor’s. While public polls show people believe close to 50% have a PhD. Close to 50% have a bachelors.
So the majority misunderstand ground truth but understand how to abstractly find the answer.
Seems better to have people know how to count their way out of a bag and miss some inane specific than everyone being actually uneducated.
It's like the conundrum that the writers of South Park had, reality became worse than the worst they could think of. To the point where they really struggled when Trump actually won in 2016.
