I've made a New Year resolution already: to come off yon Facebook thingy. Well, most of the time.

I already don't do the Twittering X rated stuff, the Instagrammatical for young ones, and the likes of Snapchatter is an unknown territory for me.

Email is still my modern social media tool of trade, as it's great for writing these learned bulletins, and is how I communicate when I'm not in someone's company.

I do notice that the young ones are still glued to their screens even when they are in each other's company.

The Fbook is handy for internal contact with kindred spirits in the likes of the theatre and football realms, and for keeping up with breaking local news on such sites as Largs People....and this newspaper, of course.

The only time I am proactive on Fleecebook is when I'm bored on holiday, and prone to share funny cartoons and pithy comments. Oh, and the reason I joined the social media was to keep tabs on family around the world...and the dark web of Stevenston.

If I'm not proactive, I tend to be reactive a lot, far too much for my liking and mental health. There are too many eejits inhabiting Planet Facebook and it's easy to get sucked in to the black hole of pointless posts.

I'm told that it's really only those of us over 50, in the main, who commute on the Fbook, with the Millenniums and the weans preferring more trendy and 'sophisticated' stratospheres such as Ticky Tocky.

We're told that Russian hackers are all over us telling us who to vote for in elections. Really? What lack of brain cells would you have to have  to be persuaded to lend your vote to someone by a social media rant?

Who is dumb enough, on any platform, to be swayed one way or another? Okay, there may be a few poor souls but not you and I, dear reader.

So, what persuaded me to start my resolutions before the bells toll for New Year?

Well, in my preferred tongue-in-cheek manner, I replied to a Facebook story about a local man standing as a candidate in the General Election. The likeable individual is passionate about saving the planet and, in particular, local wildlife. I joked to him that he would definitely have the porpoises' vote.

Presumably, he took it in the jocular manner it was meant but, out of cyberspace, came wicked witch Anne, who launched an attack. Your writing is rotten, she fumed (little did I know that literary karma was coming a few minutes later). She knows things that I don't, she cryptically claimed, and it was why I couldn't look her in the eye (imagine having a go at my skelly een).

When I replied that I wouldn't know her from Eve, she insisted I knew her as she went to Writers' Club meetings, a place I have been invited to as a guest only a few times.

She needs to be in a writers' club as she stated that THEIR were a lot of issues. There, there, calm down, madam, and check your spelling.

Recently, as I sat watching Strictly Come Dancing, ogling the legs - and the women are quite nice too - another unsolicited Fbook message popped up from a guy who didn't appreciate my weekly musings (I know, I was surprised too, sir) and used a word that is not allowed in family newspapers.

So, that's why it's better for me to escape the lunatic asylum which is Fbook.

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Thought for the Week: Election day is when the silent majority speak with their pencils in the voting booth.

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Reasons for avoiding social media abounded in the past week when up popped a story that could best be described as 'Vegan feathers fly over Mother Goose'. 

Panto bosses at a theatre in Cheltenham have dropped a song about vegans after an audience member complained that they felt "bullied".

The person, who, obviously, belongs to the millenniums or Generation X or Z, was "bullied" by the lyrics which, for example, suggested that the g in vegan stood for gassy!

Then I read that folk in Dover, Kent are complaining that two giant reindeer sculptures are showing off their rear ends at a war memorial.

Someone called Nick Doel - should that not be Dick Noel? - took to social media to say it was a bit of an insult. "They've turned them the wrong way round." 

'Tis the season to be jolly, right enough, even for rein-rears.