It arguably produced societal benefits, in that it bolstered a, "Hey, science is useful elitism" attitude, helping make people willing to give space for science to work. It needed reining in, because it was both incorrect, strictly speaking, and because socially it gave excess confidence to people starting with a truckload of presuppositions and layering a superficial veneer of science on top to bolster them.

However, although most of the humanities are doomed to suffer the postmodern condition (largely because if they even have an epistemology, it is poorly grounded), the sciences are not. That's why it's so strange that you say positivism opened Pandora's box--they were mostly building walls around science, which I agree have to a large extent fallen too. Likewise, scientism is a kind of armor preserving veneration (not fully intellectually justified armor, or you'd use a different word).

It's kind of like saying that because one city built walls around itself, it's responsible for the villagers burning their own villages, and some of the city, too.

Your other points have similarly strange credit-assignment, as I pointed out. Even if the valence is unstated (good, bad, or neutral), the credit seems off.

If the point is about the gulf between deep thought and other things, then I buy some of the points about popular culture a little bit more. But if it is simply about there being no place for deep thought, it seems like you're taking the places were the deepest thought yet remains, and blaming them for being too accessible as if being less accessible would make the thought be deeper (instead of making the opportunity disappear).