My copy of the book (60th anniversary edition)  had a forward by Neil Gaiman, and man, I really thought Mr. Gaiman was smart, but I believe either I have over-estimated him, or my media literacy skills for forewards are not up to par.
 Mr. Gaiman set the stage with “you have to imagine yourself back in the same era when this book was written, imagine their fears in order to see the speculative fiction Ray Bradbury wrote.” That’s not necessarily true. From my interpretation of the ‘why’ behind Fahrenheit 451 being written, it felt blatently obvious Ray Bradbury is writing a response to every single “older” generation’s fear about new technology and changing times. The new technology at the time of writing the book was apparently radio, and *maybe* TV (I cheated and read the “extras” at the back of the book - the copy I read is the 60th anniversary edition). Along those lines was a concern about how radio/TV was that generations “et circuses” as in “panem et circuses” (give people bread and circuses and they’ll never revolt against you). We have the exact same fears today, still. There are plenty of rants about how TikTok is “rotting people’s brains” these days (young, healthy brains don’t rot, they have plasticity 🙄 and what neuro pathways do get erased can be re-created with some effort), which weirdly seem to echo the same rants I grew up with about TV rotting kids' brains, and flipping between TV/radio stations causing short attention spans (sure, maybe, but uh...also ADHD is a thing, and that sounds like a symptom of ADHD 🙂 Much like "I went to the dopamine slot machine of social media for 5 minutes, and next thing I knew, it was 14 hours later" is an ADHD thing). Along those same lines, there is a belief/fear the younger generation is being dumbed down/getting “brain rot” because they say odd things like “Skibbi Dibbi” and “rizz” and “slay,” as if my own generation didn’t say odd things like “epic,” “doggo,” “for the win,” “all of your bases are belong to us,” etc. I am confident Gen X, Boomers, Silent Gen, Greatest Gen, etc. etc. etc. all had similar "brain rot" crap they said in their youth, too because that's pretty much what the youths *do* - they say cringey shit that drives the older generations bonkers. They adopt new technology like they came out of the uetero with it in their hands, causing older generations to wring their hands. All of that *probably* wasn't supposed to be what I got out of Fahrenheit 451. I definitely do understand the anti-intellectual argument, I am well aware there are people and places that would much rather ignore things like facts, and ignore nuance, and search for hours on end to confirm their own unconscious bias. I just tend to travel in with the intellectual crowd who points out "yeah, when we were young, we used 'brain rotting' slang, too. We eventually grew up and we're clearly out here being productive members of society, so perhaps this is not a valid fear, yeah?" 😅