People who use the term 'snowflake'?

[yesyesyep]

Aren't the brightest bunch are they?

It's like a script isn't it? Something picked up from the daily mail or another equivalent hate-rag, to shout at people who have the audacity to care about someone other than themselves. It appears to give the user a sense of superiority over someone, when they are just throwing words they like the sound of because they've seen it used to bully others before.

I find it often ties in with people who use multiple exclamation marks after a space. !!!

(Honestly, have a look for the multiple exclamation marks after a space. It's almost poetic.)

I know I probably ABU, but the level of stupidity on this planet at the moment baffles me.

I realise I am generalising a lot of people here, and not everyone who uses the term is stupid (a lot are politicians, journalists etc), but as I said before, when encompassed with a few other red flags, such as the !!! and 'take back control' and anything written on the side of a bus, that's the eye roll moment.

It's just the laziness, the way it's thrown around to absolve someone of any human decency, that's what boils my piss.

your language unfortunately shows where your virtues really lie, in the gutter, mycat. still it saves you doing anything actually, if you can just hyperbolise here with clever words like c and a.

You can always tell a snowflake by how much they haaaaate the term

Interesting article on the radio a couple of weeks ago about this kind of thing. Very briefly; using these terms allows us to depersonalise people and makes us more willing/confident to insult them. What we wouldn't say to an individual we are happy to say in this anonymous way. Really interesting thinking which resonated with me.

Spot the snowflake

I don't hate the term snowflake at all. I despise the people who use it as an insult. That's very different.

It's not an insult if it means caring about other people. I'd happily take being called a snowflake, nothing wrong there at all. Makes me sound pretty too!

But the people who use it as an insult? Urgh. No thanks. Huge attitude problems.

Snowflakes cause avalanches.

If someone uses it as an insult it's a good indication they're an idiot. It's not insulting to be identified as someone who cares about important issues and people's feelings.

I thought the same as littlepeas and frankly think it's quite a good term to describe these people who mainly seem to be young. They are offended by everything and can't seem to understand how people don't pander to their every need. I like the term and will continue to use it. Rant over!!

@CeriseCerise lol!

Sorry but anyone that supports Trump is a cunt. Even if you don't swear about it, It's an actual fact.

The only people I know who use 'snowflake' are stupid so yeah, YANBU

Just read a different thread where the OP used snowflake, but not in the US / Liberal sense that I know it. This thread made that post much more understandable.

I can now hear that Tyler Durden speech: "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake"

@CeriseCerise

your language unfortunately shows where your virtues really lie, in the gutter, mycat. still it saves you doing anything actually, if you can just hyperbolise here with clever words like c and a

My virtues lie in the gutter? Why is that? Because I care about 5 year olds getting tear gas thrown at them? Happy to be a snowflake rather than the alternative.

I understood the term "snowflake" to mean someone who is so into themselves and assume the laws of the universe don't apply to them and therefore utterly unique.

E.g. on a fitness site I am on, someone who repeatedly states they eat absolutely nothing but lettuce and exercise like a mad thing but STILL can't lose weight and refute every suggestion another poster puts forward as to why they are not losing weight is a "snowflake" or a "special snowflake" because, barring medical conditions, if you eat less than you burn, then science says you will lose weight. But of course, "snowflakes" don't.

Here the only people that use the word snowflake as an insult online are generally only doing it because they either don't have a valid point to make or the brains to make it. But usually both.

I hear it used quite differently; said derisively ' Mummy's special snowflake' is an entitled child to whom the school rules do not apply.

Its a term used by gammon-faced right wingers - who can't be upset at me calling them that, otherwise they'd also be snowflakes....

I agree OP - I also feel the same way about people using "baby-boomers" in a derogatory way and I'm not even a baby boomer!

When used in the extremist term, such as where rules don't apply to that 'snowflake', it seems to make more sense. Someone who finds insult in everything, ok maybe..

But it's become a way to label anyone who is offended by anything, even with justification, and even more so for those who oppose anything at all. Want women's rights? Snowflake? At a disadvantage because you are disabled? Classic snowflake! Worried about climate change? (Ironic) snowflake.

I can see there are different interpretations of the word, some are more valid than others, but it's the latter that I see everyday in the UK. An excuse to belittle anyone with a different belief to you.

I had understood snowflakes to be young people who have grown up being told they're amazing at everything, then arrive in the workplace with an over-inflated sense of their own worth and an inability to take criticism.

I'm not sure these people really exist.

I don't understand it to mean soft in the big-hearted sense.

"the selfless, caring sorts"

Gammons like to refer to them as "virtue signalling" or "do-gooders."

It takes a particular view of the world to sneer at people who try to do something good, decent or helpful.

I quite like it. I think the reason it has caught on so much is that is lampoons the modern phenomenon of entitled people who think they are unique and sensitive and are therefore very easily offended.

Of course any word can be annoying if it is overused or bandied around without justification, but I tend to think people who object to the term snowflake are, well, snowflakes

'I heard on a podcast the other day that the first recorded use was in the USA for a liberal in the 1850s, so someone who opposed slavery. If thats what it means then Im quite happy to be called a snowflake!'

I would be surprised & interested if this is the case because I thought it had started off as a reference to the 'everybody is a special unique snowflake' approach to parenting, and caught on because it also had the implication that snowflakes melt very easily, and only then moved to being used for liberals in general.

I'm pretty sure it hasn't been consistently used in the same sense since the 1850s so I would suspect either it's a separate use of the term or fake news.

I think it was a pretty good term for a very specific sort of self-centred, entitled person who expects the world to recognise and work around their specialness but as with many insults, it's become used stupidly widely and lost all its appositeness (if that's a word).

People who use the term need to remember that snowflakes really are beautiful, and that a lot of them together are extremely powerful.

It ties in with the utter crap that seems to get thrown at Millennials all the time, and the way that's used as an insult.

I don't think I've ever been called a snowflake, but I'm a lefty-liberal Mellennial, so it's possible and I've just never noticed.

'Gammons like to refer to them as "virtue signalling" or "do-gooders."'

I think virtue signalling is an excellent term. For me it doesn't mean people who actually DO or even try to do good things, it means people who want to be seen as good - it's all about the self-regardingness rather than the actual deeds.

'Do gooders' is rather different. It goes back a long way and used to refer to people who were actually trying to do good but blundered in convinced of their own rightness and ended up doing harm rather than good.