When a monk takes a vow of silence, is he still allowed to post messages on the internet? Chances are God won't find out. Being ancient, God probably can't work computers. He holds the mouse gingerly, like it's made of fine china. Sometimes he accidentally minimises a window and can't get it back. LOL what a noob #GodFail

Things change so rapidly these days it's easy to get left behind, no matter how powerful you are. Much online tittering occurred last Friday when King Charles II (played by Rebekah Brooks) told the Leveson inquiry that David Cameron used to sign off his text messages with the acronym LOL, in the mistaken belief that it stood for "Lots of Love" instead of "Laugh Out Loud", the idiot. The great big lizardy berk. The scaly, reptilian, basking-on-a-rock-to-raise-his-body's-vitamin-D-level nincompoop. LOL what a noob #CamFail

Actually, it's vaguely refreshing that he didn't know what it means. Cameron is 45 years old, which means he has been allowed to not know stuff for at least a decade. He's a few years older than me, but I got a head start by wilfully deciding to ignore huge chunks of popular culture as far back as 1999. That was the year the film American Pie was released. Lots of people seemed to be talking about it, chiefly because a teenager has sexual intercourse with a dessert in it. Being 28 years old in 1999, I considered myself too old and sophisticated to watch such a thing. As a result, American Pie is forever tagged in my mind as a "new" film for "youngsters".

So imagine my horror on seeing a poster the other day for American Pie: The Reunion, a film in which the original cast reconvene after 13 years, presumably now in their 30s and dealing with kids and mortgages and paunches and OH SOD EVERYTHING. It's a piece of nostalgia cashing in on something I was too old for first time around. That's how you know you're really getting old. That and the way your eyebrow hair goes all wiry and starts sprouting away from your face like its afraid of something, which to be fair it probably is, considering how knackered you look.

Youth fare aside, I have generally always been interested in what's going on, culturally. But recently I've undergone some kind of involuntary detox. In particular, I seem to be developing a serious aversion to almost every example of mass-appeal entertainment I spent most of the previous decade writing about in disparaging terms. I don't write a TV column any more, partly because doing so was driving me mad, but sometimes it's fun to watch something junky while snarking about it on Twitter. I tried getting into this year's series of The Apprentice for precisely that reason, but only managed one-and-a-half episodes before my brain rejected it. It was like staring into the cogs of a pointless machine. I couldn't remember any of the contestants' names, even when their names were being clearly displayed on the screen in a caption. I haven't seen The Voice, can't name anyone in Britain's Got Talent, don't use Facebook any more and, thanks to the magic of modern telly, I fast-forward any adverts I stumble across, so I don't even know which commercials are annoying people right now. It's like I live overseas, in a small sealed cube.

Not that I have replaced low-brow enjoyment with more refined pleasures. Right now I rarely listen to music, have no books on the go, and can scarcely get through any kind of written article without wandering off for a sandwich. I don't fully understand what's caused this hardcore cultural detox, although I suspect it's got something to do with becoming a parent and having to spend hours gazing at a tiny bellowing human instead. Apparently the next stage involves getting up-to-date on kiddywink culture by proxy, as soon as your offspring's old enough to give a shit about Peppa Pig and so on.

This will never do. At least when I used to enjoy hating rubbish, it was rubbish aimed at adults, and I'd chosen it myself. So I'm trying to get back into mainstream culture. It's just that everything popular seems so ... childlike. This week I'm going to carve out a few hours and go see the Avengers movie, which I understand is wildly popular, just so I can feel more in touch with my fellow man. I've already done my homework by attempting to sit through Kenneth Branagh's Thor (2011). If you haven't seen Thor, it's a "motion picture" in which a Swap Shop-era Noel Edmonds wanders around claiming to be a Norse god and waving a hammer. He also kisses Natalie Portman on the hand. He's a dick. The film cost $150m to make and is less entertaining than an episode of To Build Or Not To Build. The last 20 minutes consist entirely of shouting and lights and made me feel so infinitely tired, my mind left my body and manifested itself as a small clear crystal floating beyond space and time. Unless I dreamt that bit. It is the worst film that has ever co-starred Anthony Hopkins and Stellan Skarsgård, unless they've teamed up to make Vileda Supermop: the Movie while I was sleeping. I've been told it's not essential to have seen Thor in order to enjoy The Avengers, but it helps. I guess I'll get a lot more out of it now I understand Thor's complex relationship with his brother Loki, who I also couldn't give a shit about.

Once I have got the Avengers under my belt, I can try to catch The Voice before it ends. Possibly while eating jelly and ice cream and dribbling, just so I can bloody stand it. Apparently it had these chairs that spin around, but that bit's over now. Can't wait.

I've been left behind by popular culture for weeks now, but boy am I looking forward to getting back up to speed. It's not regressing. It's not. LOL.