Support for this theory:
For a long period of time, maybe 13 to 15, I was strongly socialized to gross internet culture of precisely the sort you describe. I was deeply unfunny, my attempts at humor mostly grotesque, my political opinions malformed and underdeveloped, my style of discourse deliberately rude and provocative. I laughed at the idea that an issue could be “Complicated.” Those dirty scoundrels on the other side were wrong, my social circle was right. What could be complicated about that?
Then, around 16, I rediscovered my childhood love of reading. I started with Stephen King and moved on to Terry Pratchett (a childhood favorite.) I read HPMOR, and moved on to a number of older works, including Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, an advanced English class showed me Dickens and Shelley, and I lot of Heinlein (including Stranger in a Strange Land,) etc. I slowly found myself transmogrifying. My opinions became more complex, my style of argument became infinitely more forgiving. I’ve attained levels of seeing-the-other-fella’s point of view that would make the old me mock the new me as a nazi or something.
Essentially, I seem to be something of a scientific experiment (n = 1, of course) for this hypothesis. Once I got off the internet, started watching less TV and Youtube, and started reading books, I became better in precisely the ways you describe in this post.
Food for thought.
I wasn’t excluding evil deaths on the grounds of being simplistic; I was referring to a depiction of death that appears for a few minutes in a cartoon to chase someone down, or something of that nature. I’m sure I’ve seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon where he’s chased by the grim reaper, and I have a few childhood memories of cartoon characters being chased by Death on TV. But none of these depictions lasted more than a few minutes. I’m excluding them not on the grounds of being simplistic portrayals, but on the grounds of them making very brief appearances with little lasting significance.