Well, the past disappearing has been a staple in mainstream literature for some time now (eg. The Second Sleep by Robert Harris), and not just in SciFi (eg. A F

Well, the past disappearing has been a staple in mainstream literature for some time now (eg. The Second Sleep by Robert Harris), and not just in SciFi (eg. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, which I came around to reading over Xmas, where it's implicitly assumed civilizations can fall back into a second or third medieval age). So it's not just you; it's Google and the incentives they've created on the web since about 2010 or so.