[mechanical_fish]

a growing disconnect between internet people and reality

The disconnect has always been there. People have always had immersion bias. That's why it goes by many names: Parochialism, regionalism, racism, class bias, tribalism.

It's fun to watch people blame the disconnect between tribal culture and reality on the Internet -- one could have predicted that; new technology tends to get blamed for anything and everything, no matter what the technology is -- but history is replete with examples of clueless, reality-disconnected people who managed to construct their bubbles without the benefit of any kind of networking tech. Lysenko didn't need the net. The pre-Revolutionary French aristocracy didn't need the net.