It’s Thursday the 7th, you’ve some gin in, and you’re ready for a solid 8 hour Dimbleby election special. The opening credits roll, the camera pans around the BBC election space ship — the exit polls are in.

Your excitement quickly turns to despair and denial as, with the aid of some spooky cardboard cut-outs on digital plinths, you’re told that the Conservatives are doing much better than everyone thought they should and labour are doing much, much worse. Not even the Lib Dems getting a kicking and Paddy Ashdown eating a hat can cheer you up.

As both you and the night progress though the 7 stages of denial, things are looking pretty grim. Every time you think it might not be so bad after all they call on the **STATS GUY** who confirms, with the demeanour of an overworked IT support worker that yes, we’re all fucked, and we’re fucked until 2020. You go to bed at 2. Annoyed.

The shy Tory factor and the propensity of people to shift their vote to the status quo can explain why the polls were so wrong (I suppose, I don’t really know).

And the feeling that everyone online was on your side — or rather, that no one was conservative? That can be explained too.

Facebook, Twitter and reddit are echo chambers of your own opinions. That’s fine and OK. Your real life friends are too, they’re likely to be from roughly the same socio-economic background, live in roughly the same place and agree on most of the big issues.

So, this morning I scrolled down my Facebook feed and there were stories people had posted telling me about some protests in London which were going on about the new government. Some links to petition sites trying to stop May or Gove doing some fucking stupid thing. There were articles about why we need PR. All good stuff; all stuff I most likely agree with.

In less than two years there’s going to be an EU referendum. You know where you stand on this and you know where your friends do too. Tensions will run high and the papers will be the disgusting, lying rags they always are. If we’re to get the result we want on this, we must remember that sharing a link on Facebook isn’t doing anything to help. You have to talk to people you disagree with in places you wouldn’t normally go.

I suppose I’ll have to get a Mumsnet account.