There is another piece.
Humans are growing up.
You could say that the entire human race is growing into adolescents from children.
Children "need" an authority figure.
Adolescents not so much.
So, basically we are seeing an outgrowth of small groups of people forming a unit, and with the excellent communication abilities of the interwebs, they are able to form large scale orders.
I hope you are right.
Another possibility is that human stupidity is conserved and the only things that change are technology and the ways it manifests.