There is lots of serendipity here, particularly when people are willing to either share their knowledge or feel compelled to share it as part of an imagined life "competition" or even low forms of mansplaining, though this last tends to be called this when the ultimate idea isn't serendipitous but potentially so commonly known that there is no insight in the information.

This sort of "public serendipity" or "group serendipity" is nice because it means that much of the work of discovery and connecting ideas is done by others against your own work rather that you sorting/searching through your own more limited realm of work to potentially create it.

Group focused combinatorial creativity can be dramatically more powerful than that done on one's own. This can be part of the major value behind public digital gardens, zettelkasten, etc.

There's something here that's akin to the idea of bikeshedding? Online communities flock to the low lying ideas upon which they can proffer an opinion and play at the idea of debate. If they really cared, wouldn't they instead delve into the research and topics themselves? Do they really want Taibbi's specific take? Do they want or need his opinion on the topic? What do they really want?

Compare and cross reference this with the ideas presented by Ibram X. Kendi's article There Is No Debate Over Critical Race Theory.

Are people looking for the social equivalent of a simple "system one" conversation or are they ready, willing, and able to delve into a "system two" presentation?

Compare this also with the modern day version of the Sunday morning news (analysis) shows? They would seem to be interested in substantive policy and debate, but they also require a lot of prior context to participate. In essence, most speakers don't actually engage, but spew out talking points instead and rely on gut reactions and fear, uncertainty and doubt to make their presentations. What happened to the actual discourse? Has there been a shift in how these shows work and present since the rise of the Hard Copy sensationalist presentation? Is the competition for eyeballs weakening these analysis shows?

How might this all relate to low level mansplaining as well? What are men really trying to communicate in demonstrating this behavior? What do they gain in the long run? What is the evolutionary benefit?

All these topics seem related somehow within the spectrum of communication and what people look for and choose in what and how they consume content.