Samuel Putnam Avery (Collector)
Charles Emile Jacque (Etcher)
Auguste Delâtre (Printer of plates):
Un homme dans une cave. [A Man in a cave.] (1842)

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. "[Un homme dans une cave.]" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 2, 2026. (https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/6d488120-c611-012f-7b0d-58d385a7bc34)

"There's nothing new under this sun."

Social Media has become an egalitarian’s dream come true. Imagine a space wherein everyone can be a writer if they choose, even a journalist, without the questionable benefits of training. Where every opinion finds a ready audience and every otherwise mundane happenstance can be publicly celebrated. Where world events can be dissected without being constrained by facts, and headlines can scream whatever they please without fear of being challenged. Think of it as the Wild West with coffee service.

It’s almost a full-time job just searching out the few pinpoints of truth, though following those does not guarantee that the algorithm will reliably serve them up in the future. There’s much muck to wade through between truths, and the reward at finding them doesn’t always necessarily seem worth the considerable effort required. We propel ourselves forward, onward, seeking something that, on reflection, couldn’t possibly exist. Social Media seems to be an impossibility.

Three days after the disastrous attack on Iran, information has already become the first casualty of the war, just like it always has before. This administration incapable of administering anything has no story to tell, operating on a whim as they apparently do. Their strategic intent remains as yet unconsidered. They insist that the Iranian people will spontaneously create a new and vastly improved form of government out of the rubble that the Israelis and we left behind. The mind readers have conquered social media, though, sharing their brilliant insights into what everyone’s thinking from their home offices with carefully-selected book titles displayed behind them to amplify their omniscience. Bullshit would be preferable to whatever in the heck this is, or pretends to be.

We abhor vacuums, so we create vacuity with which we carefully fill each void. The void remains, but with lights flickering, better if two or more mindreaders are bickering over whose fiction best describes what isn’t actually happening. I lose the patience to scroll to the next station of this double cross, where I genuflect with my scrolling hand while trying to work out the cramp in my smartphone hand. I skip each advertisement as soon as possible and never remember the content of any of them. One day, I suspect all those advertisers will suddenly discover that their messages were never received, and the sole support of our immense vacuity will disappear to some place where they can better waste their money. One day, but not today and probably not tomorrow, either, but one day.

It’s possible to acquire a dependence on nothingness. Social Media stands as prima facie evidence in the case of the information that didn’t inform, the news that never clues in, the dog that never learned how to bark. It bites, though, and has even been known to draw some blood on occasion. The wounds are only rarely life-threatening. They threaten tranquility instead. They inject expectation without delivering. They promise, rarely requiting. They might appear authoritative, but they’re deep down ill-informed, sharing their wealth of mis- and dis-information as freely as the medium allows. There’s nothing new under this sun.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Unscrolling, #PureSchmaltz