What's worse: people who add French flags to their Facebook profiles, or those who sneer at them?

Robert Frost famously defined poetry as the moment when emotion finds thought, and the thought finds words. But in the era of social media, who needs words? As several million Brits have been discovering this week, there is a way of showing your emotional sympathy with the French. Simply put a Tricolore filter on your Facebook page. A simple, free and wordless way of advertising your feelings to the world.

At first glance, this trend falls into the grand tradition of fatuous social media trends like #refugeeswelcome, #nomakeupselfie and Ice Bucket Challenges, where people make sure that they are the centre of attention (and looking suspiciously good while they’re at it) while water is being emptied over their heads. An easy way to advertise one’s compassionate, thoughtful credentials with just the click of a button – and an awful example of the emotional incontinence induced by our digital age.

But, then again, haven’t we always offered small gestures to commemorate sad events? Or to show respect? Why do we buy poppies in November, and feel under-dressed without them? Why do we wear black to funerals? Or attend candlelit vigils? What about writing tributes to someone in the death notices of a newspaper, or on a plaque on a bench? The flags flown at half mast, the lit beacons on the hills – are they also the sign of a nation sick with emotional overload? And, if not, is it so bad to add a flag of a country in mourning to your Facebook profile?