Brigid Purcell (PBP): generation Z, unteachable children, how will they govern in ten years?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
After securing the domain names of some of my rivals in Dublin Bay South, I tried to contact each of them and reassure them that they would not have a big problem getting them at the end of the voting and using them in future.
Elections are a stressful time for everybody and I wanted to demonstrate good sportsmanship and not see rivals losing sleep over this particular issue.
Personally, I used each of the domains to make some political points about social control media and hypocrisy but the domains have no long term value for me. I cancel the auto-renewal on them and 12 months after the registration date, each domain will expire and then whoever acts fastest can register them.
Out of all the rival candidates I contacted, they were all quite happy to find out that they could get a domain name without being blackmailed by anonymous cybersquatters, except for one person who didn't demonstrate any patience whatsoever.
Brigid Purcell, from the socialist-communist PBP went to all her social media accounts to complain about "middle aged men". I'm ignoring everything else in the discussion except that phrase. When a candidate makes a generalization like that it will be noticed by all the other middle-aged men who are deciding how to vote.
Young women from the same background as Brigid get excited and side with her. But those women were going to vote for Brigid anyway. I'm sure she would do a good job of talking about the problems they experience in life but that is only half the job of being an elected representative. What about all the other 70,000 people who live in Dublin Bay South? What Brigid has demonstrated illustrates how generation-Z have been raised in social media silos. Social media silos have not prepared these people for some of the situations they will face in real life. Employers complain about very talented people from generation Z who come to a job interview and do everything correctly up to the point where, out of habit, they take out their mobile phone and start trying to look something up or ask their friends.
I met another woman the same age as Brigid recently. She had graduated as a teacher, worked as a teacher for one year and then quit. She summarized her decision with one word: "unteachable". She mentioned that the children of today are being raised by social media rather than parents.
Older generations of school teachers are saying the same thing. They are quitting, whether it is in Ireland or in Australia. Here is a quote from the Australian case study:
During her time as a relief teacher in 2022, she noticed more boys talking about Andrew Tate in class.
Shaming by either gender is a big factor. Brigid has chosen to give me a put-down in front of her fans without even finding out what I might have to say. Andrew Tate's generalizations about women and Brigid's generalization about middle-aged men feel like opposite sides of the same coin. The problem is not the age or gender, the problem is the manner in which people rush to their social media account to shame somebody they never met.
During my time in student politics, I met many socialist-communists like Brigid so I know that it is unlikely she has any money and I would be wasting my time if I tried to blackmail her. When I contacted her like all the other candidates, I was simply going to give her the domains for free when we meet at the count center on Saturday.
If I sent the domain transfer passwords to a stranger by email there is a big risk they could end up in the hands of her boyfriend or a volunteer. Many women believe they own their domain names right up to the day they break up with their boyfriend. Then they find out that the domain names are managed through a foreign company in the US and there is nothing that they can do. In these situations, where the woman has spent time building a business on the domain name, the now ex-boyfriend really can do some blackmail before handing it over.
Having heard of many cases like this, I always want to do proper due-diligence, for example, to speak to the new owner of a domain in person or by telephone and make sure they understand the value of the domain transfer key at the moment I hand it over. Brigid rushed to judge me based on my age and gender and so she did not gain anything from my prior experience on the topic.
The other group of middle-aged men we need to worry about are the public servants, heads of government departments and agencies who have to come in to Leinster House from time to time and sit in a room with politicians posing tricky questions. Some of the public service bosses are middle-aged women but in general they are middle-aged men. When more people from Generation Z are elected into public office, I really hope they don't make the same mistake as Brigid. If they refuse to talk to people from older generations or if they humiliate public servants in front of their social media fans we can expect a lot of the public servants will quit, just like the school teachers who are quitting today. The Government will have to offer even higher salary packages for replacements to take leadership roles in the public service. █