There’s a great doc by Adam Curtis about HyperNormalisation

https://youtu.be/Gr7T07WfIhM

From wiki:

It argues that following the global economic crises of the 1970s, governments, financiers and technological utopians gave up on trying to shape the complex "real world" and instead established a simpler "fake world" for the benefit of multi-national corporations that is kept stable by neoliberal governments

Reminds me of Plato's Allegory of the Cave

So I don't think it'a new thing, but maybe it's getting worse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave

Yes, it's awesome and exactly what I had in mind.

The century of the self must be recommended also.

Baudrillard restated, as a cause rather than an effect.

I can highly recommend "the agony of the real" if you haven't read it yet :)