Sometimes you just have to shake your head when it comes to politicians doing stupid things.

Lord knows that many of them create a lot of opportunities to be bad, ignorant, out-of-touch, ridiculous and many other good English words. But sometimes they outdo even the most jaded of commentary.

There are some very basic facts of public life today that I used to emphasize when I taught classes for rookie council members. A few key ones included:

• Words written on social media never—repeat, NEVER—go away.
• There is always—repeat, ALWAYS—someone with a camera watching whatever you are doing.
• When you are invited to speak to a private audience—"with no media present"—there will always—repeat, ALWAYS—be somebody recording your remarks.
• There is no such thing as "off the record" with a reporter.
• If you did something really, really stupid many years ago, the odds are really, really good that it will become part of your next election campaign.
• Funny (words, jokes, skits, videos) that you did a few years ago probably isn't funny anymore.

If there is one main culprit for the demise of burgeoning political careers, it would be social media. Twitter, step forward.

I don't know if a week goes by when you don't hear about some politician, or senior government administrator, either losing their job because of dumb tweets, or not getting a job because of dumb tweets.

Sometimes the comments are many years old, sometimes just a few hours. That doesn't seem to matter today. If you said it, you own it.

And that is a problem for a lot of politicians who want the most public exposure. They claim it is to 'keep in touch with my constituents' and that may well be the case. The problem, of course, is the content.

My animosity towards Donald Trump is a matter of public record. I am still flabbergasted that he ever got elected President of the United States. But he did—and used his Twitter account to tens of millions with devastating (and frequently complete false and/or erroneous) commentary. He destroyed some lives and careers without a moment of hesitation. He misled many Americans on important issues. He lied more than 30,000 times while he was in office, according to the brilliant accounting of the Washington Post.

He finally got cut-off social media. But he was a Master Tweeter.

His success in dominating that medium has inspired some other politicians or wanna-bes to take similar approaches on social media.

It is a road to ruin.

It is a problem for politicians and other social media users: how do you respond in rapid and witty fashion to some story of the moment (which is what Twitter demands) and yet not cross the boundaries? How do you stay current but not post comments that will come back to bite you in the ass hours or days or years later? Humour doesn't always hold up to different times and different generations.

You would think some smart staff member would be reviewing a politician's social media before it got posted. Yet so often some tweet or comment on social media explodes—and often ruins careers.

There is a reason that a lot of celebrities and many other people eventually get off social media. It can be a very dark and negative place.

My final suggestion about social media to the bright, enthusiastic, just-elected city councillors that I was teaching was always this: Think BEFORE you push the button.

Happy Tweeting.

Oh. And good luck.