Nope! Simply the worldwide web giving a voice to the people from every high school in the world who used to fail every social and applied science ; a chance to voice their knowledge . So now instead of being called the village idiot ....that same person can meet someone online from 1000km away with the same thinking which will meet someone from Australia, Morocco, Bulgaria so on and so forth until they aggregate a group big enough to think that they are legitimate. Soon enough you have a pole of attraction that will attract the doubtful and the easily manipulated.
The internet was supposed to bring information to the people but nobody said that it was going to be a logical and science based or critical information.
Exactly. Lies and delusions propagate at the speed of light now. Facts? Reason? Logic? That shit takes time and thought, and people have no patience for that. The tech / media industry actively promotes the bullshit, because clickbait and data mining = $$$$$, and they flood the world with stupid trivial shit regardless of how irrelevant it is to 99% of people, while the real major crucial issues get ignored (as usual). The result is that every crackpot is pandered to and lifted up, as if "their truth" was in any way valid.
Case in point, the rise of this sovereign citizen horseshit, and this kook who thinks she can claim the crown because "2+2 = purple donkey", or something.
In the old days, they'd be locked in some asylum with all the other lost Napoleons and false Romanovs. In the really old days, asserting royal title wrongly was treason, so delusional or not, you either won that by the sword or got decapitated on the executioner's block. Either way, argument settled. Your move, Queen of Nothing, Sovereign Ruler of Nobody.