I'm not sure what your trying to say. I have heard of breadlines and also the toilet paper shortage (in the US) in the 70s. I picked a couple of examples ready to mind, but there's countless more right now that form a constellation of points that eclipse any single phenomena taken from history.
Note that I'm also note saying things are worse right now than other times.
I'm saying things are stranger, weirder than other times, less predictable from 3 years earlier, as a civilization, than at other times of high chaos.
There have always been flat earthers. The internet lets the freaks meet and tell each other that they are normal. Now the algorithm fuels it and the media amplifies it. And yet the earth is still not flat, and somehow, still spins.
Things are not stranger now, you just hear more about the strange people and unusual things.
Sure, ironic flat earthers bear some resemblance to past cultural touch points like SubGenius, and some people take them too seriously.
That isn't the strangeness I'm talking about. Or rather, it's only a part of it: Awareness of it by rank and file average young people is new and has an impact on their worldview and whether or not the world around them makes any sense. But you're cherry picking things like that which are not part of the strangeness that I mean:
I'm not sure you can look at lockdowns, quarantines, fundamental shifts in how we talk about socializing, a generation of students losing 1-2 years of normal academic and social development, mass shortages of basic items, the emergence of countless strange digital currencies based on mixtures of ideology, economics, and memes, politicians using the rhetoric of murder against their colleagues... How much more should I go on?
I don't think you can look at all of that and reasonably say "things are not stranger now"
Even if all of that had been going on previously (it has not) then greater awareness alone would still be enough provocation to push people into seeking the escapism of "RS".
Perhaps we are misunderstanding each other on the point that I'm making?
Note that I'm also note saying things are worse right now than other times.
I'm saying things are stranger, weirder than other times, less predictable from 3 years earlier, as a civilization, than at other times of high chaos.