I have mixed feelings about WhatsApp, like I'm told a few million users do. On the one hand, it allows me to keep abreast of what's happening in the lives of family and friends across the planet; on the other, it exposes me to everything that is wrong and awful and negative about life in our rapidly deteriorating country on a daily basis. To uninstall it is not a solution either, given that a new social media platform is always waiting in the wings to take the place of what we collectively embrace or reject.

One of the reasons for this is our increasing obsession with what online marketers refer to as 'virality'. This is helpfully described online as 'the tendency of an image, video, or piece of information to be circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another.' It is now sought-after the way imported chocolates once were. When something, somewhere, starts to go horribly wrong, there are now a few hundred eager people, smartphones held high above their heads, desperate to capture it all not for posterity, but for the rapid consumption of other people online.