I first noticed it in the Hitchens “Hitchslap” videos in the mid 2000’s, but I imagine it started out earlier as that when I started following politics and a lot of the videos and those adjacent to them were reposts of cable news shows.
Were Socrates and Plato just the 4th century BC equivalent of them? That’s depressing if true.
Not sure what side of the fence you’re on, but Genetically Modified Skeptic put out a video recently about this concerning the religious right.
He basically said no matter how good the argument for insert point, very few people are going to take the matter into consideration and it just ends up being a huge money making initiative.