Why Bitching on Social Media About Your Community Does Absolutely Nothing to Solve the Problem.

By Lorri Matthewson MBA in CED, Owner and Lead Consultant

Whole social media pages are devoted to complaining. And everyone watches while a thread goes off the rails about a rumor they heard, a pothole that never gets fixed, and the extraordinary amounts the community pays their staff. (I’ve seen what they have to put up with, whatever they are being paid, it is not enough).

It might feel like you are doing something when you start writing it up for social media, but just so you know:

Bitching on social media might feel like engagement, but it is not.

And worse? It actually causes your community harm.

If you care about where you live, it is worth understanding why.

1. It spreads misinformation faster than staff can correct it.

Most municipal issues are governed by legislation, budgets and policies—not your upset feels. Social media is all about the feels.

One wrong assumption in a comment can turn into:

·         The town doesn’t care

·         Council is corrupt

·         Staff are lazy

·         They should just fix it

No facts there, just an opinion, often formed in absence of correct information, but treated like it is the truth from the readers. Once that happens, people stop trusting their Council, and the staff. I always wonder how people you grew up with, work with and live with become the enemy because they made the choice to show up for your municipality. If you do suspect real corruption, (it happens) that is a topic for a whole different article.

2. It discourages good people from running for Council or working for the Town.

Imagine, you are doing the best work you can and then log in to see your former friends and neighbors dragging your name through the mud by people who never once contacted the office. That kind of public hostility:

·         Burns out staff

·         Discourages volunteers

·         Scares off many that would otherwise run for Council

·         Makes good Councillors quit

·         Hurts people

And no, that is not an acceptable occupational hazard. If you have a problem with something to do with the Council or the Administration, slandering someone online is not the approach you want to take.

3. It creates a culture of bitching instead of problem solving.

When the loudest voices are the angriest ones, people start believing that complaining is participation. It is not.

It can become a community based on negativity, and those communities are less collaborative, less trusting, less willing to volunteer. It hurts everyone in the community, including the complainers.

4. Municipal staff have policies and procedures that do not allow them to act based on social media posts.

Municipal staff do not track these posts, and they are not allowed to use them as formal complaints. So, while people are getting all fired up online, the actual issue sits untouched because no one reported the issue through the proper channel. The pothole doesn’t get filled faster because 47 people said “you go girl” and another 98 people said “unacceptable.”

5.It makes your town look bad.

People from outside your community see those threads too. Never-ending complaints affect business attraction, tourism, real estate sales, and community pride.

A town’s online culture becomes part of its reputation.  One of the reasons we chose the community we live in is that kind of thing seldom happens, and when it does, they are gently corrected by someone else in the community on the better way to handle the complaint. I followed their socials for a year or more while we were deciding where we wanted to live. We noticed, and we brought a business, bought a house and created a job for someone besides me. What you post matters.

1. Report the problem to the municipal office in whatever format is required.

People will bitch, but they won’t sign a complaint. They will, however, post it online under “anonymous” to get the party started. If you are confident enough to complain publicly you should be confident enough to attach your name to an actual complaint. Social media posts don’t get logged, don’t get investigated, and don’t get fixed. If you want results, use the real process. Otherwise, you are just venting into the void.

2. Ask questions before assuming you know everything.  

Don’t assume you have all the information, no matter who you heard it from. Rumors spread fast in a small town. Faster than the facts. Faster than the staff can possibly respond, assuming they even read it.

3.Council meetings are public. If you want to know how it works, you should go.

Just listening teaches you more about how your town works than socials do. Most people in a community have never attended a Council meeting and assume it works like any other volunteer committee. It most certainly does not. Your Council is a government and has rules up the wazoo.

4.Participate in surveys, consultations and planning sessions.

Councils use those tools to help inform their decision making. Complaining about the decisions when you excluded yourself from the decision-making process only results in frustration for you.

5.Fixing a problem for you or your group can cause a host of problems for someone else, or another group.

In a small population, every decision Council makes affects more than one person. When someone demands a quick fix, they don’t realize that solving their problem may create a lot of other problems for someone else. Municipal decisions don’t happen in a vacuum and if a staff changes a policy, adjusts a service, or makes an exception for one, it can, and has caused a ripple effect in ways that simply doesn’t occur to the complainer in the moment. The loudest person on social media isn’t the only person that the municipality must consider.  Municipal leadership must consider what is fair, consistent, fundable and legislated. They cannot and do not consider what they read on social media.

6. Resources are limited. Sometimes the choices are very tough.

Municipalities prioritize based on community need, determined by asset management, fiduciary responsibility, their budget, surveys and focus groups, and the information the Council gets from its rate payers through the complaint process and through the staff. That is why the proper complaint process—with names attached is so important. When someone signs their name, staff can verify the issue, understand the context, assess the broader impact, check for unintended consequences, and make a fair decision based on policy, or if need be, Council direction.

Posting it on social media skips all of that and demands instant action. Nobody wants to live in a community with a Council that pays any attention to that, because that is how bad decisions get made.