Part of the reason why it's so hard to give a shit about Barry Allen is due to how hard the narrative and editorial keeps trying to downplay his more selfish actions, which ironically happened because THEY ignorantly let him commit those actions to begin with

Was Barry a genuinely nice guy in the Silver and Bronze Age? At this point I really can't tell. But ever since his return DC unintentionally turned him into an ignorant, self centered individual who was given a pass for his behavior while everyone around him suffered

This all consuming drive to save his mom thanks to Thawne's sadistic meddling made Barry into more of a one-note character than before, culminating in him accidentally destroying the universe when he tried to prevent Nora's death from happening

Barry turned the DCU into a literal nightmare where Aquaman and Wonder Woman were odious murderers being manipulated by even crueler individuals, Superman was a tortured test subject, while Batman and the Joker were... ew

Even Barry's attempt to fix this mess left the universe worse than it was before, because whether it was thanks to Pandora or Doctor Manhattan, literally every hero and villain was stripped of their development and turned into joke versions of themselves

But when Flashpoint was over and the New 52 started, we saw Barry was STILL given something for his trouble and granted new memories of his mom alongside the privilege of delivering a heartwarming letter to Bruce Wayne

Yet all this happened at the same time as Barry's memories of the DCU before he fucked everything up, of Iris and Wally and Jay and Bart and the entire Flash Family, were slowly erased with Barry doing nothing about this. He doesn't even warn anyone of Pandora's supposed threat.

The difference between the way DC's portrayed Barry and Wally over the years is DC's deliberately tried to demonize and ruin Wally because those with power hated him, while refusing to do anything about the way they accidentally turned Barry into a myopic asshole

Basically, DC ruined Barry and their halfhearted attempts to address this only made him and themselves look even worse