For my entire professional life, I have started nearly every weekday morning with an extremely important productivity ritual: I make a coffee, I sit down at my computer, and I mess around on the Internet for an hour or so.

And, for most of my career as a writer, this has been an effortless task. I have had accounts on dozens of social networks, message boards and online communities thronging with similarly bored and truant peers, vibrant with creativity and delight. Or, at least, with tolerably decent jokes.