Is there a social networking site for miserable misanthropes?

Is it just me or have we been a little bit misled by the internet? Perhaps I misunderstood, but I thought the internet was a place where miserable, antisocial misanthropes could hide from the real world and occasionally make contact with other miserable, antisocial misanthropes in order to say something cutting.

Instead, it's become a world where perky teenagers hook up with other perky teenagers in order to make inane comments about the party they went to last night whilst competing to see who can collect the most visually appealing virtual friends.

Just how did this happen? I remember going onto MySpace when people first starting going on about it. I stared at it uncomprehendingly. "So, what? It's a site where I list the things I like for the benefit of a) people I know already who already know what I like or b) people I don't know and don't feel a pressing need to get to know.

For a time I thought it was evidence that I'm becoming an old curmudgeon, and that's certainly true. However, the fatal flaw is that I was a young curmudgeon as well. Nothing depresses me more than meeting new people and having to give them the list of bands I like, so why on earth would I want to start up a webpage which has the sole purpose of providing a shop window for my personality that other people can peer at in order to decide whether to make a purchase.

Someone recently said to me "you don't have very many friends on MySpace" with a tone of reproach (he'd hoped that I could help him promote something he was doing). And it's true, I don't. That's because I've broken the cardinal rule on MySpace: I've only added people I actually know. Crazy, I know! Apart from a lucky few (and I use the word "lucky" there entirely inaccurately), the only people on my friends list are my actual real life friends (and a couple of bands). And the fact that the vast majority of my friends don't have MySpace pages, I think makes me look actually quite bloody popular thankyouverymuch.

And now I'm obliged to join Facebook so that I can follow all the people I sit in the office with all day long as it is. If we're not Skyping each other, leaving messages on Twitter, or burbling on our Facebook wall, we're probably in the pub actually speaking to each other. These virtual umbilical cords connect me to people in a way that goes totally against my misanthropic nature. I now know what everyone is doing, thinking and staring at all day long. It's only a matter of time before there's a site that IMs our friends automatically every time we have a bowel movement.

It's time to stop this crazy nonsense so I can go back to being anti-social and miserable. The internet has been over-run with chirpy people all trying to have sex with each other. It must stop. Which is why I'm going to set up an anti-social network for fellow miserablists. We can all sign up, do nothing with our profiles and not invite anyone to join us. And then we can sit, in splendid isolation, re-affirming our grumpiness, while everyone else has loads of sex. Damn them.

[Btw, don't forget to add us to your Facebook... yes I've spotted the contradiction - I'm contrary, what can I say.]

Katie Lee is editorial director of Shiny Media, ex-editor of Shiny Shiny and an all-round grumpy arse.