In fantasies, this version of ourselves not only imagines itself exacting revenge on our humiliators, it also visualise the scripted scenes, expertly directed. Most of all, we see in our mind’s eye the vast digital audience acclaiming our celebrity, hence assuaging the hurt of a life’s humiliation.

Lee Rigby’s killers hung around the scene of the ghastly drama they scripted, directed and enacted, machete in bloodied hand, precisely for the consummation of this terrible theatrical performance on this only decade-old digital stage.

Social media then – and the 24 hour news channels which so slavishly serve it – are the fuel for a new sort of egotism where you view yourself not from inside your own head, but rather from some imagined camera angle viewed by millions of fans.

Reality and fantasy collapse into each other: observe those witnesses at the Shoreham air crash whose first instinct faced with burning cars on the road was not to run towards them to offer help but rather to film them on their phones.

We have become directors and actors in our own films in which we can fulfill our fantasies of posthumous celebrity – and hence of digital immortality.

Ian Robertson is Professor of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin

His book The Winner Effect is avaliable on Bloomsbury