I logged on to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter five years ago as research for an article I was writing on how we foolishly duplicate real life via the Internet. I am quite happy to admit — though I suppose I should be ashamed — that my initial scepticism was grossly ill-founded. I thought at the time, like a Luddite troglodyte, that the Internet was going to destroy human intercourse (no, not that sort!) and make us into weird cyber creatures living in some parallel reality blah blah.

Now I confess that there can be no more delightful and useful discourse than in this absurd cyber reality. I’ll start with Facebook because I like it less. It is the most useful tool for staying in touch and pretending to stay in touch with people you are not remotely interested in. It allows you to be supremely false while claiming to be completely concerned. Birth, death, marriage, break-up, promotion and better and worse are all taken care of by the simple “like” button. This way you can pretend that you’ve seen someone else’s boring holiday photos by just barely noticing the one that pops up on your timeline or you can make a one-line anodyne comment about a new hairstyle that might have seen you gagging in face to face real life. You can appreciate other people’s babies when they are far away on Facebook and not breaking all your crystal knick-knacks in your drawing room.

Net-working: The fakery apart, social media sites do sometimes help one catch up with long lost acquaintances, or find new friends who share interests.