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13th Aug 2019

Irish YouTuber Melanie Murphy on the “nasty” reaction to tweet about six-figure earnings

Alan Loughnane

Murphy said she can understand why some people reacted the way they did.

Melanie Murphy drew the ire of social media this year when she tweeted about her difficulty getting a mortgage.

The Dublin YouTuber/blogger wrote online that despite earning six figures for three years in a row, she could not get a mortgage she wanted to get a home in Skerries.

The tweet finished with the line, “this is: “being an Irish millennial.”

Her tweet prompted quite a response online, as well as a tirade of abuse, which resulted in Murphy deleting it.

Murphy was a guest on Ireland Unfiltered recently and she said that she can see why her tweet provoked a reaction, but that many people, especially those who don’t follow her, took it up out of context.

“Yeah and it was taken up really badly, but I kind of see completely now why,” Murphy said.

“Even my Dad explained to me, he was like, ‘It’s the way you phrased it and it’s the way it looked on its own. Like take out all the other stuff you’ve talked about to do with homelessness. Take out the fact that you’ve never talked about what you earn before. Take away all that. If I just saw that I’d be like shut up.’

“But is that the difference between Twitter and, you say, Instagram is a nice place to be but then Twitter, then maybe when something takes off, you reach people who might not have seen you before and might not know whatever context. They might not know where you’re coming from.”

While Murphy said she is aware she’s far better off than many others, she argued that it shouldn’t be the case that she’s “doing well” but can only afford to live far away from her family and friends. But she was also surprised by the level of abuse she received.

“My point with it was, I thought and what I intended, was that it would add to the broader conversation of the housing crisis –  even when you are doing well it’s still really, really difficult,” Murphy said.

“It’s such a difficult thing to solve. When I was in with the mortgage meetings they were like, ‘Why don’t you buy with your partner?’ I was like, ‘he’s massively in debt, he has pilot loans out. I can’t.’

“That’s not going to happen for years. I could probably afford a small house, really far away from all my family and friends and people were like, ‘Oh well, at least you can do that so shut up.’ My point was that that shouldn’t be the option. Our population isn’t going mad. There’s so many problems in this country to do with that like with land and all sorts of stuff.

“And I think when something like that gets taken and people are quote tweeting it with real nasty captions and stuff. I think that’s the culture on Twitter, people just love to take out their frustration on others rather than the people in charge who can make a difference and I find that baffling.”

Ireland Unfiltered, brought to you in partnership with Carlsberg Unfiltered, will be available everywhere you get your podcasts and on YouTube every Tuesday.