One week into 2014, we know by now whether any new year's resolutions will work. Spoiler: they won't, so as thoughts of impressive, showstopping life changes crumble to dust, the next best thing must surely be fine-tuning our existence with more manageable tweaks.

In the past few weeks I've seen an increasing number of lifehack links flying around on social media. They're meme-style manifestations of the sort of thing we used to call handy hints, so well established in the pages of women's weeklies that even a satire, Viz's Top Tips, is part of the national consciousness. But we live in the internet age, so they're not tips any more. They're definitely hacks, like with computers and robots and so on.

You'll find them piled on top of each other in posts on sites such as Reddit and Viral Nova, and the message darting backwards and forwards across my Facebook feed seems to be this: you know you won't change your life in any meaningful or rewarding way, but have you ever thought about using an old CD spindle to hold your bagels? How about creating a handy nosebag by wearing a hoodie backwards and filling the hood with popcorn? And did you know that you could use Doritos to light a campfire?

I hope this doesn't make me seem gastronomically unenlightened, but if I've got a readily accessible packet of Doritos I'm not going to set them on fire based on the distant promise of some warmed baked beans, particularly if my tin opener is at home because I used it to open some problematic plastic packaging after a thing on the internet told me to. But literally on the other hand, isn't there a risk that eating Doritos would make my fingers smell? I may have the solution: a post I encountered last year explained that the best way to eat Cheetos – for the culturally illiterate, these are basically transatlantic Wotsits – is with chopsticks.

Many lifehacks, like a large number of religions and most TV talent show judges, are fascinating because they are both ostensibly rational and utterly deranged. My favourites are those that don't even find a new use for an everyday object, or a new way of doing something, but rely solely on common sense, presented with man-on-the-moon enthusiasm. "Take the annoying sliver of soap from an almost used-up bar and stick it on to the new bar," for instance, is so obvious that if anyone above the age of three said it aloud to you with the remotest flicker of wonder, the sensible option would simply be to walk away.

What keeps me coming back to lifehack lists is that, in common with life itself, the dismal catalogue of disappointment throws up the occasional thrill. So while it's all very well ironically LOLing your way through a blogpost of 99 lifehacks that will make your life better (as long as you're receptive to the idea of living in a house festooned with bulldog clips and upended, mutilated plastic milk bottles), when you see someone jamming AAA batteries and a load of tinfoil into a compartment intended for AAs – then declaring that these makeshift batteries work perfectly – your cynicism evaporates. Never mind the commenters warning of fire, explosion and potential death: there will be no trip to the newsagent next time the batteries in your mouse run out. Life has changed for ever!

Click away from the page and the euphoria is often short-lived. Doubt descends. You accept that it would probably raise eyebrows in polite company if you used dental floss to slice a swiss roll. You acknowledge that there could, potentially, be a safety risk involved with removing one shoe while driving, in order to use it as a cup holder. There is probably a slim chance that your daughters would object if you attempted to tie a ponytail using the nozzle of a roaring vacuum cleaner.

Nonetheless, it's interesting that a lot of these supposed hacks are shared online by an increasingly tech-savvy audience. (Many concern the storage and disentanglement of wires, and most solutions seem to involve a toilet roll.) The idea of rebranding top tips as lifehacks – which started in 2003 – is that you're not following the cutesy, quaint housewives' advice featured in the sort of magazines whose front pages scream: "HELP! I'VE BEEN BUMMED BY A GHOST – ON MY WEDDING DAY", but that these revelations are something new.

There is plenty more of this sort of thing online: a substantial number of Buzzfeed's more whimsical stories ("Funny things happen if you work in an office!") remind me of the Life's Like That! stories I used to find almost amusing in my nan's copies of Reader's Digest. Kickstarter often offers incredible solutions to non-problems – it is currently offering a Bluetooth keyboard that looks like a ZX Spectrum – like a crowdsourced twist on the Innovations catalogue.

As for those time- and money-saving lifehacks, I'll keep clicking on the links, hoping that one day I'll find a brainwave that won't burn my house down. If nothing else, they help me ponder one important question. (A tip from me here – this is a great icebreaker at parties.) The question is this: which is really worse, running the risk that pickpockets know where you keep your money, or trundling through life concealing your money by using a sanitary towel wrapper as a wallet?