Editor's note: Former city councillor Barry Ward, who also served as deputy mayor, has joined BarrieToday as a political columnist. This is his first column.
From the time I joined city council in 2000 until the time I left in 2022, many things changed in the life of a councillor and much of it had to do with technology.
In 2000, we were still getting a lot of telephone calls from residents. By 2022, communication with residents was overwhelmingly by email. We went from receiving paper copies of agendas to reading them on our iPads. We were holding some meetings from the comfort of our homes through Zoom.
But, of course, with every technological advancement, there is a downside. I’m talking about the advent of social media. Many news outlets already had an online presence when I was elected to council, but few offered a way for the public to interact. That soon changed, really taking off after the creation of Facebook and Twitter in 2004.
Suddenly, elected officials obtained the ability to hear what people had, until then, been saying behind their backs. It hasn’t been pretty. The expression, "if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all" was replaced by, "if you don’t have anything nice to say, go online.”
Some people have a real hate on for some politicians. Some people have a hate on for all politicians.
Some people hate everything.
The bad news for those newbies joining Barrie council is that they will get their fair share of haters. The worse news is, those people and their comments aren’t going away. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. Nasty comments on social media are here to stay.
So, you can’t stop it. But you don’t have to make it a problem for you. There are three ways to deal with cruel comments.
One, you don’t have to read them.
Two, you can read them, but you don’t have to let them bother you. That was my usual approach – just assume the people writing stupid comments don’t have a clue what they are talking about. And don’t engage the writers.
Three, it really doesn’t matter what a small number of people say. As columnist Matt Bai wrote recently in The Washington Post: “The shouts and slurs you hear online aren’t the sounds of an ascendant ideology, but rather the shrill echoes of a dying one.”
My own approach, as indicated above, was to ignore social media comments and concentrate on the positive. And there is much that is great about our community.
During my time on council, I attended many, many flag-raisings and events and had the opportunity to meet with countless individuals and groups. Barrie has thousands of volunteers working every day to make life better for our citizens – the homeless, the hungry, the lonely, those battling physical and mental illnesses and those dealing with trauma.
We have people working to improve the environment, volunteering with youth groups, sports and the elderly, volunteering in schools and helping to put on community events.
The list goes on and on.
Always remember, these are the people making a real contribution to Barrie, not making nasty online comments.
Barry Ward is a veteran editor and journalist who also served on Barrie city council for 22 years. Fair Comment will appear regularly in BarrieToday.
