It's not really about intelligence to be fair, it's mostly the result of a society that glorifies and almost enforces passive-aggressiveness to the point people don't even realize they do it, while criminalizing direct aggressiveness no matter how justified, someone can be the most horrid annoying cunt imaginable, but if you call them that one time you'll be the bad guy. You can be constantly annoying, snarky in a mean way, but no one is allowed to simply shut you up quickly and fairly.
This leads to really stupid and condescending behavior such as people refusing to understand stories in any kind of media and instantly assuming they know better than the author and found a "plot hole" and can "fix the story" without devoting 15 seconds to asking themselves if they simply misunderstood something. Notice how you almost never see "Can someone explain..." but almost always see "The issue with" "Here's how I'd fix" "Is something a plot-hole?"... Or the typical people who start a topic saying provably false things, you correct them in a concise manner and immediately it's the "no one cares you NERD I actually have a life". In a healthy society, they'd get slapped once, they'd learn to be decent and everyone would move on. But these days, you either let them continue unpunished, or you have to stoop down to their level and get to stupid scheming yourself.
