Social media has supposedly ramped up our impulse to judge each other on the most trivial grounds – but is this really a new thing?

‘Are we living in an “era of microsnobberies”? Writing in the Washington Post last week, the lifestyle influencer Victoria Wolff asserted that we are, claiming that the fragmentation of American taste facilitated by, and expressed through, social media had created a new phenomenon of “hundreds of tribes” judging each other on highly specific sets of status signifiers.

Wolff cited a few – “your children’s lunch boxes, whether your roses are native and if your olive oil has a story” – that left me feeling like a grubby little peasant with my narratively inadequate oil, but also relieved not to live in Amagansett in the Hamptons, as she does. It sounds like a Nancy Meyers meets Edith Wharton hellscape. Indeed, I was reminded of reading earlier this year about the tiny-batch $80 (£60) fruit pies you’re supposed to bring as a “hostess gift” in those parts (etiquette specialists advise Hobnobs remain an acceptable hostess gift in the eastern suburbs of York).