Do you believe that every morning is brighter and sunnier than the last; that simply getting out of bed is a special gift – another golden opportunity for you to be a better person and to make the world a more joyous and fulfilling place?

No, nor do I. But reading the daily posts and reels on my social media channels suggests I am in an increasingly dwindling minority.

Reading my Facebook or Instagram feeds is to be transported to a sun-kissed, honeydew world of an eternal breakfast cereal advert, where the smiles are always brighter, the colours always sharper and where nothing bad ever happens to anyone.

On social media, no-one’s child ever fails an exam, no-one forgets their wedding anniversary, has a bad day at work or a hangover that would peel paint.

No-one tells their friend he looks like a bell-end when he grows a moustache in November, or that there’s a word for someone who regularly checks their testicles for lumps and then tells the world about it.

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If you believe what people post on social media, it’s hard to imagine that anyone has ever disagreed with anyone else, done something they’re not proud of, or even had a negative thought.

To scroll through your feeds is to slip into a warm bath of lavender-scented positivity and, although we all know that it’s a confected reality, we continue to gather in a circle and hold hands for the next happy clappy reel.

There’s an inherent contradiction in social media because it allows everyone to be what they want to be, simply by saying so.

You can support mental health awareness at the touch of a smartphone keyboard, without ever helping – or even meeting – someone who suffers from acute anxiety, bipolar disorder, or ADHD. Standing in solidarity with Ukraine and Gaza doesn’t require you to do anything other than swapping your profile picture for a flag.

Another problem is that it doesn’t recognise nuance, inconsistency, or mood. We have all thought things on the spur of the moment that we don’t really mean and later regret, and there are countless examples of people who have made the mistake of committing those thoughts to social media, only for it to cement-cast them for eternity as racist, misogynistic, sectarian, homophobic or, worst of all, negative.

Writing anything on social media that is not perceived as Kumbaya-chanting along to the latest social issue du jour, risks you being condemned as a doom-monger and a naysayer.

But, for me, social media’s biggest crime is that it is utterly and irredeemably humourless.

If I was ever suited to social media, that time has certainly passed. It’s not that I find it intrusive or over-bearing, it’s worse than that – it’s boring. More pertinently, it doesn’t allow me to be who I want to be.

When you start to self-censor to the point where you’re moderating every word for how it might be misperceived, then it’s reasonable to ask if it’s worth the time commitment.

If you’re a public figure, or if you write for a living, then you have a duty to consider the potential impact of your language. Communicating with friends and followers for fun should not, for me, mean avoiding nuance, pretending to care or, most importantly, suppressing a natural instinct to be funny. Life’s too short.

I have reached an age where the calculus of success is measured not by the scale of my own achievements, but rather - how can I put this delicately? - by the failure of others.

There is nothing quite like the warm glow of indignant vindication when a hated cabinet minister is forced to resign, or when a fat cat’s superinjuction fails and his smug, sex-pest face is plastered across the tabloid front pages.

Who hasn’t watched a useless colleague scale the ranks in a gilded career, powered by nothing but luck, unction, and a nerveless willingness to piggy-back on the talent of others, and then revelled in their demise when they are eventually found out?

You can’t possibly be a sports fan in Scotland for the glory, and so the pleasure of watching England get beat in new and creative ways more than makes up for the terminable, humiliating losses.

We traditionally associate such feelings with the German "schadenfreude" - from "schaden" (damage) and "freude" (joy) - perhaps from a wartime belief that only the vile Bosch could have the technocratic mentality, firstly to conceive of such a phenomenon and then to put a name to it.

And, while it’s true that English has struggled to adopt a single word for this delight in others' misfortune, we appear to be an exception.

A Japanese proverb states that "the sweetness of misfortune in others' lives is akin to honey".  The French refer to it as joie maligne - a sinister delight in the troubles of others - while the same feeling is known in Danish as skadefryd; in Hebrew as simcha la-ed; in Mandarin as xìng-zāi-lè-huò; and in Russian as zloradstvo.

The Romans spoke of malevolentia, while the Greeks, even earlier, used the term epichairekakia (literally epi, over, chairo, rejoice, kakia, disgrace).

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People like me who voted to remain in the European Union in the Brexit referendum recognise that, overnight, an important part of our identity and our place in the world, was swept away.

We acknowledge that, intellectually, there is nothing we can do to change that. But the occasional dopamine burst of absolution that accompanies the publication of the latest economic statistics which demonstrate how the country is going to hell on a handcart because of the stupidity of those who voted leave, make us marginally more emotionally accepting of it.

Seeing our energy and food bills rocket; being unable to find an NHS dentist; or sitting with elderly relatives for 10 hours, waiting for an ambulance to arrive, are made slightly more tolerable by the knowledge that the politicians responsible will be collecting their P45s in a matter of months.

None of that kind of thinking is suitable for social media which demands a resolute adherence to empathy and positivity, and so from now on I will have to go in search of new ways to communicate my thoughts to others.

I’ve had the first stirrings of a revolutionary idea that involves talking to people - at the dinner table, in the pub, in the supermarket queue, that sort of thing. I’m not sure if it will catch on but I’m sure it must be worth a try.