[Jedd]

Yes, that phrase stuck out to me also.

Apologists for language attrition will assert that converging language into a handful of very simple words is doubleplusgood, and we should embrace the dumbification because that's 'just how languages work'.

But for a historical article, I did expect a slightly more nuanced take.

[soared]

Why is this new word “dumbification” and not “smartification”?