Picardía / Thumbs Up Emoji Man - World Wide Web

I doubt that people before internet had noticeably better understanding of satire etc.

Rather, I think that it seems like that because a) nowadays there's just so much more stuff available to misunderstand and b) it's easy to make lots of noise about said misunderstandings (via social media).

The internet didn't do that, recent events that sound like what would normally be hyperbole or satire did that.