The innovation of WeChat, which is said to have 468 million active users a month, is the ability to have private group chats, but that raises all sorts of issues because generally the only person you know in the group is the one who invited you to join it.

Which takes me back to my question about real friends. I now have 247 WeChat contacts, of whom I consider only 30 to be friends. Seven of those are what I would call close friends.

However, recently I decided my relationship with WeChat, one that had at first shown so much promise, was over. These days I share my thoughts, whether they be of happiness or something else, with my true friends within the sanctity of our one-on-one privacy.

Meanwhile, all around us, in the carnival sideshow that WeChat has become, everyone continues to chatter away.