Please. Spare me.
Spare me the European Union flags, with one of the stars changed to a teardrop. Spare me the doomsday personal political broadcasts. Get a grip, with the paroxysms of grief. The melodrama of it.
If there’s one sure way Brexit has been shocking, it has been the laying bare of the herd mentality of many who live their lives out in the safe, self-important echo-chamber that is social media.
Over the past few days, it has been the club where only those who agree on the referendum result being The End Of The World are allowed to enter, and woe betide anyone who dares to suggest that, perhaps - just perhaps - there might be a valid reason behind why at least some of the 17 million Brits voted to leave the EU.
And - whisper it - it might actually not result in the imminent collapse of the sky above Britain and could, in fact, end up being a confident strike for independence.
We don’t know yet. We don’t know either way.
Because its inhabitants spent the past few months agreeing with each other about Brexit from behind their keyboards, social media was stunned Friday morning to find that, in the real world, voters in the UK were not in their cosy club. In fact, over 51 per cent of them disagreed with their harmonious consensus - and Britain was out.
The hard slap stung. They were shocked, they were angry, they were very sore losers; and most ironically of all - for a bunch of liberals championing inclusion - they simply could not accept the results of a democratic vote. They were intolerant of an opinion different to their own.
Predictably, soon the call for another referendum grew legs. We need to do it again! We need to have another one, so we can get the answer right!
Should you get the majority of your news from Facebook feeds - as an increasing amount of those on it seem to do - you could be forgiven for thinking Hitler had come back from the dead and annexed London, such was the outpouring.
Suddenly - having never heard anyone EVER extol the wonderfulness of the EU on Facebook or Twitter - the floodgates of love opened.
It was like a collective Recherche A Temps Perdu for Erasmus trips, Serge Gainsbourg and Tuscan wine - and got itself into such a romantic reverie that it confused Europe with its economic union.
An economic union, we don’t need to be reminded, that blackmailed us here in Ireland into paying the gambling debts of the bondholders, or else no bailout.
They were emoting all over the place about their “grief” and “sorrow” and we got treated to poignant “I wandered lonely as a cloud” faux-sililoquys about the fall of England, from those who’d spent a summer working there circa 1996.
Logging onto Facebook was to come up against a wall of personal broadcasts as everyone shared their tuppence worth on the worst thing to happen since The Flood. Saddest to see were those who were genuinely scaremongered into having real fears for their loved ones in London, as if a nuclear bomb was about to hit.
I’d tell you when I’d have had fears for those in England. During the7/7 bombings in 2005, when more than 50 people were murdered by a series of suicide bombings on the transport system.
Personally, I am completely indifferent to the result. I’m not sure I have a right to a strong opinion on it, over here - in this totally separate country called the Republic of Ireland - to piggyback on Britain’s affairs, to go hand-wringing and publicly angsting my head off about a choice made by those in the United Kingdom. Would they do the same for us if Ireland had voted to leave the EU?
My instinct is that there’s a good reason it’s called Great Britain and that everything will be ok. If it’s not, they’ll have to deal with it somehow. They’re big and bold enough.
It’s not really any of our business. Yes, you can argue: How will it affect us? But you can ask that question about virtually any world event. Arguably, it may be more pertinent in relation to the outcome of the US elections.
I certainly have not dismissed half of all British people as a bunch of idiots and racists - or worse, the referendum result being the “fault” of a stupid move by old people.
The grotesque, aggressive online jabs at the elderly was the cruellest of all discriminations, as well a revelation of the blinkered arrogance of the young who cannot see themselves ever being old.
Then there were those who expressed absolute shock at the fact that everybody they knew had voted Remain, so how could this have happened?
Because in the social media bubble, and in Ireland in general, it’s not widely known that a good half of the British press was pro-Leave - and there seems to be no interest in looking at the reasons why.
Despite the fact that there was undoubtedly an ugly, scary, anti-Johnny Foreigner element to the voting, many intellectuals and political heavyweights in Britain saw it as a revolution and were optimistic about the opportunities ahead.
The Telegraph - one of the most highly-regarded newspapers in the world, whether you agree with its politics or not - said: “In an act of considerable daring, we stood up for our country against the shining idealism of the Remains who wanted to keep us in an organisation so opaque and controlling it makes Franz Kafka look like Peter Rabbit.”
The Daily Mail urged: “Take a bow, Britain” and talked of “deserving better than to be treated as a mere offshore province of an unelected, anti-democratic, corrupt, pan-European bureaucracy.”
Backing Brexit, the Sun said: “We must set ourselves free from dictatorial Brussels” before crowing: “See EU later!”
As economist David McWilliams commented in the aftermath: “The Irish establishment lecture us about how the Brits should vote, yet never go and feel the pulse of the people. The new reality can be a massive economic opportunity for Ireland; if we manage it correctly, we can benefit enormously.”
So before you go changing your Facebook profile to a crying European Union flag, take the time to listen to the other side, whether it turns out you agree or disagree . Usually when half a nation is thinking the same thing, there’s a reason for it.
Larissa Nolan is a freelance journalist