Federico Castellòn: Self-portrait (20th century)

"Disconnecting from the twenty-four/seven reinforcement machine has been helping me see what wasn't otherwise self-evident, and what, disturbingly, was."

The very impermanence of social media messaging fuels the need for almost constant repetition of certain themes. Depending upon what each user’s algorythm presumes, unique reinforcements of prominent messages continue virtually continuously: continually and virtually. This repetition results in certain concepts, “memes”, taking on a unique quality. They enter the realm of Self-Evidence. They require no proof. They inspire no questions. They become givens. For those not initiated in a particular strain or dialect of these babies, the result can seem completely disorienting. Messages seem to start somewhere in the middle, producing incoherence. For those inculcated, though, the memes hardly require repeating. They seem to be echoed more for the purposes of reinforcing than declaring, for their assertion, their very certainty, seems Self-Evidently correct. Nobody for whom they’re targeted finds any reason to question what they presume. They presume virtually everything.

Doom Scrolling serves as an essential element of this Self-Evidence. It becomes necessary because most memes, however obvious they eventually come to seem, cannot stand up to even casual questioning. The scrolling distracts the thumbs from independent research, which social media fairly thoroughly prevents, anyway. Search doesn’t serve as anything like an adequate replacement for actual research, for search most often serves as a self-fullment operation while research pushes edges as its premise. We tend to search for the answers we want rather than the answers we might need. We reject contrary information as obviously irrelevant. We feel successful when our prejudices get reinforced rather than when they get gored. Doom Scrolling serves to keep us contained within our own constituency, free from contrary concepts and disturbing questions. Our faith in common sense blooms while we wallow in self-reinforced ignorance.

This goes for the left as much as it does for the right. Whatever else social media succeeds in, it excels in keeping people isolated within their constituencies. What goes on within competing social media universes seems unconscionable to the unwashed and reassuring for the natives. The hate speech that shocks some when it slips out through some seems like everyday fare for those who belong there. Even the most easily disprovable memes enjoy great credibility there among the partisans. The reinforcements are self-administered, much like a cancer patient receives access to a morphine syringe attached to their IV rig. Their’s are not information injections but identities pumped into their social veins. They might not be addicted in any traditional sense, but they nonetheless grow dependent upon the reinforcement. The poison was planted long ago, only needing reassurance to continue growing.

We were once two people, only separated by a common language. Now we are a multitude divided by tenacious Self-Evidence. Jefferson, employing a common rhetorical gimmick, asserted that certain truths qualified as self-evident. The utility of employing such a tool lies in the irrefutability of the assertion produced. Nobody can refute Self-Evidence without disclosing their own imperception. In practice, only an idiot could even attempt to refute Self-Evidence, since its proof requires no supplementary arguments. It just is. But ours do not seem to live quite as independently as Jefferson’s asserted rights once did. Ours requires reassurance. We need frequent recharges to maintain the trance necessary to continue our separation dance.

Whenever I catch myself engaging in absolutist thinking, I might slow myself down to question an underlying assumption. Disrupting the constant social media scrolling opens some space for me to face that I might have fallen in with some disreputable characters. Do I really believe that all billionaires are evil, or have I accepted some heavily reinforced reassurance as evidence? Have I researched (not merely searched) for evidence that all data centers might not be created equal, or have I accepted some reassuring reinforcement of an underlying prejudice? I quickly flinch when I encounter the product of another cohort’s faulty reasoning or obviously absent questioning, but curiously, I feel just as quickly reassured when I happen upon some story that reinforces my preexisting prejudices. I must be an amalgam of many different memes, each quietly encouraging me to draw their conclusions rather than mine. Disconnecting from the twenty-four/seven reinforcement machine has been helping me see what wasn’t otherwise self-evident, and what, disturbingly, was.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Unscrolling, #PureSchmaltz