I'VE long feared that social media would take a dark twist. That bone-chilling premonition was realised when I stumbled across a seeping trend on my Instagram feed: the cleanfluencer.

While idly scrolling, an image popped up that prompted a double take. At first glance, the neat rows of cleaning products appeared to be a badly misdirected advert. The algorithm had clearly gone awry.

Then I realised what I was looking at. This wasn't an ad. It was a proud declaration of intent: the person who had posted the carefully curated and filtered shot was showboating plans to clean their house.

Apparently, rolling up your sleeves is the new sitting on your backside, with so-called "cleanfluencers" amassing huge followings on social media for posting photographs and video blogs that reveal sparkling floors, gleaming kitchen worktops and scum-free baths.

You can find them on Instagram under hashtags such as #cleaningobsessed and #cleaningtime (if you are that way inclined). The leader of this growing cult is Sophie Hinchliffe, aka Mrs Hinch, a 28-year-old hairdresser from Essex who has 1.8 million followers.

Hinchliffe shares photographs of her immaculate home – with its swathes of grey furnishings and mirrored surfaces – as well as chatty videos as she disinfects bins and gives the loo a scrub.

She has her own lexicon: cleaning is "hinching" and shopping for products is a "hinch haul". Her fans are the self-dubbed the #HinchArmy. Hinchliffe has even penned a book, Hinch Yourself Happy, that led to a fierce 11-way auction between rival publishing houses.

Her beloved cleaning paraphernalia is kept in a cupboard that Hinchliffe calls "Narnia" after the magical wardrobe portal in the CS Lewis books. She has a feather duster nicknamed "Dave". Rounding out the gang is "Minkeh" (an anti-bacterial cleaning pad) and "Buddy" (a microfibre kitchen cloth).

Now, I'm not doing down Hinchliffe, who has said that cleaning is her way of stopping herself from worrying and helping stave off panic attacks. What I don't understand is why 1.8m people would want to watch someone scrape grease off a cooker top? Then attempt to emulate it.

Seeing the #HinchArmy post excitedly about hitting Home Bargains to get their latest "hinch haul" makes my blood run cold. Dropping the best part of 50 quid on bleaches, wipes and miracle cleaning pastes, then rushing home to start cleaning is not my idea of a rocking weekend.

It's like a mash-up episode of Mad Men and The Stepford Wives meets The Walking Dead where a legion of apron-clad zombies roam through homes looking for manky grouting that needs a scour.

I wonder what our grannies would have made of all this? Imagine social media had been around when they were dragging rugs outside to give them a good beating over the line or using a washboard in the kitchen sink to tackle the entire family's laundry by hand.

The fetishisation of cleaning is jarring. For a start, the most high-profile "cleanfluencers" are – surprise – women, as are the lion's share of their audience. It smacks alarmingly of blithely perpetuating gender myths, not least when UK women still do 60 per cent more housework than men.

Our mothers and grandmothers didn't fight tooth and nail to get us out of the domestic kitchen and into the workplace only for cleaning to suddenly be held up as a pinnacle of cool.

It doesn't matter how much you disguise it with zany language and bling: housework is a chore.

A golden age of telly returns

Cabbages at the ready, prepare to crush a grape: the children's TV show Crackerjack! is set to be revived 35 years after it last aired.

Announcing its return, the BBC has said the series would be updated for "today's connected generation giving them an all-round, interactive experience while retaining the beating heart of what etched Crackerjack! into the affections of British children for three decades."

I have no idea what any of that means but the most important thing I've gleaned is, as in the original show, the hallowed Crackerjack! pencils will be awarded to contestants. Hurrah!

Here's hoping it retains other elements, such the eclectic prizes chosen for their unwieldiness, including tinned fish, buckets, cigarette cases, hula hoops and sombreros. Fun fact: the cabbages – three and you were eliminated – were made of cloth and said to be surprisingly heavy.

Now if only I could figure out the right person to lobby to bring back 1990s Saturday night gem Gladiators then we would truly have ourselves a nostalgia-fest. Do I have a seconder on that?

RIP Rover

The Mars rover Opportunity is no more. The US space agency NASA has declared its mission complete. The six-wheeled robot last contacted Earth in June last year, just before it was enveloped in the darkness of a massive dust storm.

It was 15. Or 105 in dog years. What? I think of it as a dog, don't you? Anyway, the dust storm eight months ago blocked out the sun, its source of energy. After the storm cleared, Opportunity — affectionately called Oppy — didn't "wake" back up.

Which sounds akin to the heart-breaking yet character-defining moment in a Disney movie where the parent of a leading protagonist is snuffed out. Simba and Bambi could relate, I'm sure.

My theory is Oppy is merely pretending to be asleep. As soon as we turn our backs and divert attention elsewhere towards life's other big questions – to scrape the mould from jam or not? – it will spring into motion like the cooker in the Wallace and Gromit film A Grand Day Out.

Oppy will then be free to spend the rest of its life trundling around the surface of Mars, happily pottering, without being made to perform inane tasks for its former human masters.