THE NEWSDESK: It's not you, it's virtual me...

A world where none of us can afford to retire, because we're all too busy working ten hours a day to pay our gas bills and buy the latest cranial implant which will stream a holographic version of MTV's The Valleys onto our retinas.

A world where elderly people don't see another person from one day to the next, but where robots will keep us all abreast of each other's semi-fictional net lives via social media.

Yep. That's the "next big thing".

Search engine giant Google has patented plans for software which slowly learns how you react on social networks.

It says the software can mimic your usual responses to updates and messages from friends and relations.

The "bot" responses would be indistinguishable from real responses, or that's the plan.

Oh that would just bring out the worst in me. I'd have to mess with its head by espousing vastly jarring political views, both a deep love and hate of the films of the Coen Brothers, a desire to listen to plainsong and grime, and switch between urban slang and Welsh, just to see what it did with that.

"The popularity and use of social networks and other types of electronic communication has grown dramatically in recent years," Google software engineer Ashish Bhatia wrote in the patent.

"It is often difficult for users to keep up with and reply to all the messages they are receiving."

The aim of the software, Google says, is to help cope with the what some media call the "data deluge" we currently experience.

That phrase made me laugh out loud. Data deluge.

Only someone who has never seen a selfie taken by their niece showing her latest hairdo, or the regular Saturday night takeaway report from their old school pal, or the Twitter followers' rants about buses/other drivers/people in queues/people who forgot to shower today would use the word data about what we see on social media.

Ah, Google says. But it could help filter that stuff out.

The software also analyses continuing interactions and flags messages that demand a more personal response.

Handily creating a two-tier world where, like some Nineties club with a velvet rope creating a so-called VIP area, there are real interactions happening for the lucky, lucky few.

God forbid that the reason many people use social media is to keep in touch with the real people they care about, or those who amuse them.

It's only a matter of time before some Twitter indiscretion by a minister is blamed on a bot instead of their office staff.

And on the plus side, the old "it's not you, it's me" conversation just got a damned sight easier.

But, but. Tempting though it is to create my own science fiction twin, do I really need a social media bot?

I already have my own system of dealing with the data deluge.

Don't let people be your Facebook friend if you don't know who they are. And, sometimes, if you do.

And Bitstrips? Come on people. Who really needs to be in a cartoon?

Oh, yeah. Forgot*rueful smileyface*.

If someone is tedious on Twitter, unfollow, unfollow.

Don't enter into other people's Twitter rants or Twitter spats. One side or the other will think you give a monkey's and bother you forever more.

Don't respond to people you hardly know who post needy "Happy Birthday To Me. Yeah!" messages.

It's the equivalent of looking someone in the eye on the Tube.

And step away from the phone and the tablet.

Go out into the real world where there are parks and trees and bars and cafes and meet people you know and talk to them. It's refreshingly old-school.

I sometimes even use the telephone. I'm rebellious like that.

Besides, isn't all this social media stuff a massive extension of our egos, our way of making ourselves seem just a little relevant in this largely indifferent world?

Any move to replace ourselves with a few lines of code just misses the point.

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Oops. The Newsdesk columnbot seems to have developed a glitch.

Normal service will be resumed soon.

Until then, enjoy this The Newsdesk word cloud made up from previous columns.

Coalition. Cameron. Sex. Eeeeew! Horse. Badger. Economy. Mural.

Have you turned it off and on again?