Please spare me your smug polling station selfies – the ballot box isn’t the place for virtue signalling

A picture can tell a thousand words – but it doesn’t always. A picture of someone standing proudly outside a polling station, vote cast, for example, tells just one word: smug.

I don’t wish to be mean. Exercising one’s democratic right is a serious business, and not a moment for soundbites – and yes, we’ve all at some point felt the hand of history on our shoulder as we put our cross next to a candidate’s name with the kind of tiny pencil usually reserved for pre-digital Argos. However, people have been quietly voting for decades without feeling the need to mark the occasion by posting a snap on Instagram.

Last Thursday, as the polls opened in various parts of the country, social media platforms saw a steady stream of virtue signalling. There were selfies of bearded dads taking their two-year-olds for a first trip to stick it to the Tories. There were artful images of polling station signs bathed in sunshine or nestled in a bush. And there was, of course, an endless array of doggy snapshots, each canine joining the many thousands of mutts who have unwittingly become part of a long-running internet meme.