Kitcatt Nohr Digitas

It was the French symbolist poet Paul Valery who remarked that he could never consider writing a novel because he could not conceive of writing something as arbitrary as 'the marchioness went out at five o'clock'.

I don't know about you, but that's how I feel about Facebook and Twitter. I find changing my status on Facebook, or tweeting at all, among the most arbitrary things on earth.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as full of myself as the next man. (Many might go further than that). But it seems totally unlikely to me that anyone in the world would be interested in what I am thinking at any given moment.

Perhaps that's why my favourite follows on Twitter are actually made up people: like Dr Samuel Johnson, the ******* Pope, or the recently deceased (pretend) bin Laden. It seems a great way to get traction for a made-up apothegm, but less so for a real one. Even Stephen Fry, who is reputed to have something of a way with words, can tend to come across as a little mundane when he directs you to yet another bit.ly url to watch one more unmissable piece of content. And if he can't pull off the art of being witty all the time, then what hope can there be for us mere mortals?

Facebook status updates are even more arbitrary than tweets. Have you ever heard a funny one, apart from those occasional sad stories of people who have arranged a divorce by changing their relationship status, and those tales of saps who got themselves fired by revealing that they weren't actually ill at all on their sick days off work, but recovering from a hangover/on holiday/sleeping with their boss's wife?

Anyway, I've got to go now. The Marchioness is coming round for tea.