The elections depressed me for all kinds of reasons. There was the noise, for one, because candidates have been trained for years to believe that those who shout the loudest are the only ones who will be heard. There was the assault on our eyes at every street corner, where illegal banners publicised photographs of smarmy men and strange women, their hands folded, smiling as if to con us into believing they will remember any of us after they step inside Parliament.

There were the jingoistic rallies full of lies and bluster, where we were all encouraged to suspend disbelief and cheer for people who don't even read their own manufactured manifestos. There was the relentless rancour on television and newspapers, with politicians doing their best to go lower than their competitors and say the kind of things most of us would shudder to even think about. And then there was the relatively new phenomenon of online outrage and manufactured news, from staged videos to doctored clips, flooding our inboxes and WhatsApp group chats at all hours. I envied those who managed to ignore it all.