It wasn’t just that Captain Caveman geezer who’s been shooting from the hip this week. After the Plymouth pee-ow—pee-ow—pee-ow, every Facebook fruitloop crawled out from under their personal stone to have their tuppence worth.

Firstly, mental health came under the microscope, but to be fair we weren’t looking at in-depth analysis here. Yes, the shooter was a weird-looking hipster turd, who had done something fundamentally evil.

Sure enough, he ‘must have (or in Facebook terminology must of) had mental health issues’ , and the police and social services were to blame for not supporting him, leading him to ‘snap’.

That’s one snap judgement right there, and in one fell swoop, all people with genuine mental health issues once again became stigmatised as latent ticking timebomb headcases.

Perhaps he was just a murderer?

Plenty thought that he was a veritable beast, and rammed the point home by dropping a plethora of insults, c-bombs and other harsh invective that they could not readily spell in comments on his profile picture. Yes, like he could actually read them now he’s fired both barrels up into his chin?

Of course, those comments weren’t for him but for us.

There’s nothing like a bit of self-validation by demonstrating to others that you are anti-gratuitous killing. Props to Sharon, Darren, and the rest of the one-tooth, three-toed posse.

And worse ungrammatical grapeshot was to be blasted into our digital faces.

One airhead hoe in the worsening race to the bottom opined that it was all disgusting that Weirdo Beardo had offed one victim right outside her house (or more probably the housing association’s house) as if it might have all been more palatable, had he just iced five people under cover of darkness in remote woodland.

Another person was singularly outraged that the gung-ho gunslinger had popped a couple of dogs. Now I’m an animal lover but some human beings died too, love.

Elsewhere, a local C-list politician was ‘devastated that a child had been among the victims’, which arguably suggested that four adults being blown away might have left him merely miffed.

But at least his observation weakened any future suggestion that he might ever harm children. Invariably, the people who make a point of setting out their stalls as vitriolic haters of kiddie-fiddling or abusing vulnerable people a propos of nothing are the ones who end up getting their collars felt, balls-deep in reluctant church club adolescents.

You can also bet your last pound that in coming days other grasping political nonentities will completely re-imagine the killings to fit their own narratives around domestic violence, policing, social care, and whatever other bandwagon they typically adopt in order to shovel up wheelbarrows of media brass.

The rosette for the champion of the Facebook fightback, though, went to the wag who dryly posted ‘Gentle giant, misunderstood’.

That pearler sent the thick-as-mince Universal Credit chimps into meltdown as they thrashed about and mentally tried to get to grips with the concept of ironic humour.

Waste of time. They can’t even get a handle on everyday life unless they’re mashed on prescription meds.

If it hasn’t already sunk in, this tragedy is not about the five victims but the self-obsessed, mercenary onlookers. The corpses are necessary building blocks of a platform for some – any – degree of self-establishment. That begins with the initial online comments and develops into more concrete, real-life performances.

These hopeless frauds will continue to exploit the opportunity to at least momentarily be someone as they scramble to the temple of collective grief when the various funeral corteges roll past, tossing flowers in the same manner that they ordinarily and readily service half-cut matelots for a tenner.

We may even see a horse-drawn carriage or two, or the slow-motion release of some white doves, which now seem to be de rigeur and favoured stage props for chavs funeral groupies seeking to be part of the showy group response to any tragedy that presents itself for a milking and a bilking.

And all this will be pre-empted by the town centre collection buckets in the immediate future. They’ve got to strike while the iron’s hot, and that weed and those tattoos aren’t going to pay for themselves.

What a tragedy.

Not just the multiple murder, but that for so many a loss of life like this is the only source of a fleeting sense of purpose.