> We've had about 150 years in which people have been conditioned to trust anything that they see in a photograph

This is also about as long as we’ve had popular democracy. (Something like a fifth of Indians are functionally illiterate [1][2].)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363173220_LITERACY_....