As we head into a general election year - with the added ‘bonus’ of a US Presidential election - avoiding political bores on social media seems like the smart resolution for 2024.

Easier said than done. We should brace ourselves for the keyboard ‘activists’ becoming even deeper entrenched in their mouth-foaming tribalism, as the online echo chamber goes into overdrive and the big issues of the day are debated in reductive, insulting and self-important cliches.

Expect to become heartily sick of the following tedious phrases over the next few months:

‘Right side of history’: Often used to claim the (always overcrowded) moral high ground in a political argument, usually by the sort of people that history is unlikely to touch with a bargepole.

‘Let that sink in’: An overdramatic suggestion that the preceding statement should have a profound impact on the reader when the implications are fully digested. The sensible response is usually a bored shrug and letting it sink without trace.

‘Do better’: Another finger-wagging favourite among self-important online activists, who believe this is a devastating sign-off to their latest lecture. The fact that it reads like a comment a teacher would write on your homework is no coincidence.

‘Living rent-free in your head’: A self-aggrandising term frequently used to suggest gleefully that your comments are getting under someone’s skin, usually when they’re not remotely bothered.

‘I’m triggering all the right people’: To many, the main aim of posting anything on social media is not to win others over to your argument but merely to ‘trigger’ them (and then crow about it). If your principal aim is to be annoying, I suppose it’s mission accomplished.

‘He/she blocked me ages ago’: In the same ballpark, blocking one-upmanship is a competitive sport among those with no discernible life beyond annoying other people in Elon Musk’s cesspit. Being able to claim you’ve already been blocked by your chosen pantomime villain – Lineker, Fox, Farage, Vorderman, etc – is worn as a badge of honour in response to someone else bragging about their own skills as an online irritant. It’s the X/Twitter equivalent of those music fans who wear tatty, ancient tour T-shirts to concerts, to demonstrate how long they’ve liked the band.

‘Gammon! Bigot! Karen! Racist! Snowflake!’ etc: Arbitrarily accuse your adversary of being some sort of ‘phobe’, or guilty of an ‘ism’ of your choosing. Either that or offer a lame and devalued insult, while still claiming to be the ‘nice’ person. See also, declaring any opinion you dislike as ‘hate speech’, as if that should end all debate.

We probably have enough of these tired and banal cliches for an extensive bingo card, although it wouldn’t take more than two minutes to cross them all off. Still, I’m sure everyone will stop arguing once the election’s over, just like we don’t discuss Brexit any more...