It’s all fine, a babbling brook of lolz, lmaos and yes, memes, but as soon as I try to turn it into something more, something that asks, ‘Hey, are you an actual human being, or just Siri in a North Face puffer?’, the chat tends to go cold. I’ll huff and puff, tut about people’s refusal to engage with intimacy, until I scroll back and realise I’m part of the problem, since about 72 per cent of my input has been sending gags about sex, partying — and the darkly comical impossibility of achieving intimacy. What I thought was shorthand for a shared sense of humour or affection looks like a way of avoiding saying anything at all. If you are what you put out into the world, perhaps I should go easy on the cheap gags about Céline Dion, or choking.
