Please, Stop Telling Me to Vote

Here we are then. By 10PM tonight the opportunity to have your say will be over. The polls will close, and church halls will return to being after school club and Weight Watchers meeting venues. And then we play the waiting game. Will our lives be changed forever? Maybe. Maybe not. Who can say? All this writer knows is I will be glad of its end. I want to kiss every second that passes closer to the final of this whole fucking ordeal. It has been an incredibly tiresome, irritating, boring, weird, smug, classist, racist, xenophobic train ride into the worst of the British mentality. And it's all your fault.

Yes, you. You with your Twitter account. You with your Facebook page. You with your Tumblr, your desktop fogged up with reaction gifs, with only a puzzle piece of the original background cracking through, smothered by clips of some Orange is the New Black character rolling their eyes. I'm sick of you fucking telling me what to do. DJs, journalists, musicians, waiters, pundits, mothers, fathers, cousins, brothers, sisters – I know what voting is. You don't need to tell me over and over again. I'm aware that this is a vote of particular importance and great significance for the future of the United Kingdom. I am not an idiot, and neither is everyone else, so why do you insist on treating me like one?

There is something quite pernicious about the narcissism of the red-faced demand of others to vote. It is seemingly based on the premise that you alone are the one who cares about it. 'Why doesn't anyone understand?' you think. 'Why is no one tweeting about how important it is to vote as much as I am?' It could be, friend, because like almost every other vote people keep their choices private, which is fine. It is your right to vote, not your obligation. I saw a woman on the tube today with a sticker that said "I Voted REMAIN". Do they give stickers out when you vote Tory or Cannabis is Safer Than Alcohol? Do you weave the streets of your town with an air of smugness, red badge shining, after you vote for a local Labour MP? Maybe you do. Others don't, and don't appreciate being spoken down to.

It has been one of the worst campaigns for anything political in my lifetime. I have been endlessly bedazzled by the attitudes of everyone involved, from the abysmally racist centre-right to the haughty, preening centre-left.

Much as the "Would you side with Gove and Boris?!" banshees would like you to believe, this is not a vote on the personality of politicians. Rather this is about us – the normal, everyday people whose personalities, thoughts and feelings aren't polished to a shined finish in some MP media training session. They can be fraught, fearful, loud, and, sometimes, insipid and reckless. But your social media feed won't allow for that, and the debate has exposed the canyon of difference and cossetted, assumption-based bigotry that both sides lap up like feral cats to bird blood.

Everyone should be allowed to express their opinion as little or as much as they'd like. There's no issue with saying how you feel – it's how we open up discussions about things and help each other learn and make decisions. There is an issue, however, with calling everyone who answers a yes or no question "wrongly" a racist (unless that question is "are you a racist?"). To demand of others their complicity in doing things your way with such a facile attitude will only alienate everyone further into their own dark corner.

Whatever, you think everyone's a cunt, fine. The biggest problem with this soup of shit isn't people and their terrible opinions about what we should do, more their sanctimonious demand that, whatever I do, leave or remain, that I vote.

Let me tell you something: I will fucking vote if I want to fucking vote. You don't need to tell me endlessly how important it is. Do you think you're the only person who has thought about it? Once you tweet your order, why tweet it again? "AGAIN guys, really important that you VOTE TODAY!!" Thanks man, until you said that I thought this referendum held the same importance as voting in round one of the X Factor, but now you've said that, I realise it's an unbelievably significant referendum that could have consequences far beyond the realms of my current knowledge! Really stoked that you reminded me how feckless you think I am pal, cheers for that, good work.

There is nothing wrong with sincerity. I'm not here to bang the drum for ironic detachment. I voted today, and it was a tough decision. I think I made the right choice. Only time will tell. I'm not mad at people for pouring their hearts out for something they feel is momentous – and it is – rather the way they have gone about it. We are in an era where memeification of any and all political and social discourse will occur furiously until the end of time. Memes breed simplicity, simplicity breeds ignorance, and ignorance mixed with a delusion of intellectual grandeur creates an unearned smugness, one which has descended like a deep green miasma on every Instagram account across the land. I think you should vote, reader. Vote with your heart and your mind. Do what you think is best.

@joe_bish

To see all our articles about the EU Referendum, check out Europe: The Final Countdown.