The do-gooders at K&K know all too well that sometimes you can’t please everyone. That became abundantly clear this week after we painstakingly examined Olympic bronze medalist-turned-park-board-candidate Brent Hayden’s Instagram account and the wealth of shirtless, ab-fab photos it provided, including one of Hayden lounging spread eagle in a sauna. A few days later, Hayden responded via Twitter, “Breaking news!!! Swimmer takes off shirt!!!” His wife Nadina followed up with her own zinger revealing the couple’s shared misunderstanding of our column and their symbiotic love of exclamation marks: “wow jealous much!!!! He’s been a swimmer his entire life!”
The column also received feedback from the Mayor’s Office which didn’t take kindly to the comment: “First off, good on Hayden for having the wherewithal and online savviness to have an actual Instagram account. To the best of our knowledge, Mayor Gregor Robertson or the social media team posing as him, doesn’t even have an Instagram account, though he’d probably just post pictures of himself riding a bike and DJ-ing...”
Funny thing. Turns out Mayor Gregor Robertson does have an Instagram account. We got word of this after one of the mayor’s media dudes emailed Courier reporter Mike Howell to inform us of our egregious error. Our bad. But in our defence we still can’t find any links to the mayor’s Instagram account at mayorofvancouver.com.
So in the spirit of fairness, we’ve carefully examined all the photos on the mayor’s Instagram account so you don’t have to. Regrettably, we found no shots of Robertson shirtless, sprawled out in a sauna or dousing his ripped abs under a waterfall. It’s just a bunch of photo ops of the mayor attending a whack of culturally diverse events, wearing culturally diverse attire, standing at podiums, shaking hands and twerking. We may have made that last one up. In other words, it lacks the subtle nuances, personality and shirtlessness of a real person’s Instagram account. Where are the selfies? The food pics? Crappy video from the Rush concert he attended?
However, there is one series of photos that seems to be taken by an actual person and not an extension of the mayor’s social media team. In 2012, someone posted on the mayor’s Instagram account pictures of a cat milling about city hall’s grounds.
Besides the fact that we personally know this nomadic cat with an interest in municipal politics — his name is Leonard, not Paco as one commenter stated, and he belongs to our neighbour — the reason these pictures spoke to us is because there was no intent behind them. They weren’t taken to portray the mayor in a particular light or represent an idea he supports — they were just silly pics of a cute cat, which is the real reason the Internet exists. So, if the mayor really wants to interact with his constituents via various social media channels, and bump up that account’s followers above a paltry 1,052 — Brent Hayden has over 600 more followers than the mayor, we might add — let’s keep the cat pics coming. A picture of the mayor enjoying some sweaty sauna time wouldn’t hurt either.
