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.

@Neverknowingly

"Snowflakes are not automatically kind and thoughtful. Do please show me where I said that? What I did say was that the term generally gets hurled at people who are being kind and thoughtful."

Ok. Not automatic but generally / usually. Acceptable.

"address the points rather than lazy name calling."

You said that people who say 'snowflake' are only doing so because they're pretty horrible people. Do you know what irony means?

It's become synonymous with people of a far right persuasion so yanbu

I agree it has but what a shame for the left. At the moment, it is only people on the right that are speaking up for free speech, the left (of which I am one!) have capitulated on free speech and seem intent on protecting 'rights' and not causing offence

I like the term ‘snowflake’ tbh because it makes me aware of the type of person I’m dealing with. Usually the type of person who hears a ‘new’ term and uses it all of the time regardless of the context and lacks a proper argument.

For example, someone I loosely know who I accepted a LinkedIn invitation from used the term as a blanket complaint against younger people and it showed me his real mentality. I then deleted him as I don’t want someone so obviously hard of thinking and so completely lacking in self awareness to the point that he’d slag of an entire generation on social media, connected to my professional network.

If you can't brush off an inaccurate jeer you may have a problem with resilience.

If you then willfully put anyone using the particular word into the category of
"much less of a good human than me and my tribe" well yes we have a wider problem.

There's a lot of highly entertaining confusion here on what this term means (looking at you OP )

Snowflake: An overly sensitive or easily offended person, or one who believes they are entitled to special treatment on account of their supposedly unique characteristics.

If you can't brush off an inaccurate jeer you may have a problem with resilience.

This is exactly the snowflake issue. These people weirdly believe they can go through life and no-one will say any awful to them. And if they do, they have some weird right to demonstrate their hurt and offence, and everyone has to step on eggshells around them forever more

If you can't brush off an inaccurate jeer you may have a problem with resilience.

Also the term may therefore have been used correctly

I agree it has but what a shame for the left. At the moment, it is only people on the right that are speaking up for free speech, the left (of which I am one!) have capitulated on free speech and seem intent on protecting 'rights' and not causing offence*

In what way have the left capitulated on free speech? Can you give an example?

If you can't brush off an inaccurate jeer you may have a problem with resilience.

What a very obviously nasty, dismissive comment. You've pretty much proved OP's point, if I've upset people it's due to their failings not my unkindness.
The people who are (incorrectly) described as snowflakes are usually very vulnerable people who are more likely than anyone to lack resillience. Your comment is very indicative of how nasty, unkind people think. Why bother about treating people well? Why not put the onus on everyone else to just bounce back from our unkindness. Don't like cat-calling? If you cant get over it you lack resilience. Don't like racial slurs? Well if you can't cope with a bit of name calling you lack resilience. It's all only words right?

In what way have the left capitulated on free speech? Can you give an example?

No platforming?
Trigger warnings?
Safe spaces?

These are all from the left

We are living in a climate where our discussions get shut down / we are afraid to air genuine concerns and curiosities for fear of being labelled nasty bastards

The only way is through conversation and IMO the left are not behind this anymore. It is shut down dialogue and don't ever allow a debate when people may disagree. Its a real shame, but that is what happens when the left goes wrong - free speech is the thing that goes, you can only be allowed to follow one opinion.

'
Mooncuplandings. 'Snowflakes' are not all nice and caring, because the word snowflake is being bastardised. Judging by this thread, interpretation of the word can be many things.

Just because you feel YOU use the word appropriately, it doesn't mean that other people agree with you or share the same care about the appropriateness of the word.

Many people are called snowflakes for simply caring or trying to help. Being called a snowflake because you're concerned about people on the street starving? Nope! Not correct. That's empathy.

The horrible snowflakes you speak of? I'm guessing the ones who get offended by everything for a hobby, they are not the people I see being targeted on a daily basis. I don't give people who want to be offended by everything any time out of my day.

But, I do like to try and understand the other person before I judge them as such.

What a very obviously nasty, dismissive comment. You've pretty much proved OP's point, if I've upset people it's due to their failings not my unkindness.
The people who are (incorrectly) described as snowflakes are usually very vulnerable people who are more likely than anyone to lack resillience. Your comment is very indicative of how nasty, unkind people think. Why bother about treating people well? Why not put the onus on everyone else to just bounce back from our unkindness. Don't like cat-calling? If you cant get over it you lack resilience. Don't like racial slurs? Well if you can't cope with a bit of name calling you lack resilience. It's all only words right?

But where is individual responsibility for your wellbeing in this here?

It's not meant nastily at all.

If someone cracks an obvious false remark about me it's time to answer back ( or avoid said person if I so wish!)

Why should it upset me unduly if I am secure in myself?

It also doesn't mean the person is beyond redemption! We are not always at our best so should give others a bit of leeway imho.

This is how I'm trying to teach my children to view the world and I certainly don't hate them.

These people weirdly believe they can go through life and no-one will say any awful to them. And if they do, they have some weird right to demonstrate their hurt and offence,

I love the very obvious irony here. Basically you want the right to say whatever you want to anyone, yet if they're hurt by what you say you don't feel they have the right to express themselves in return. This is classic. People often confuse freedom of speech with the right to say whatever they want without criticism. This is not the case. You have no such right. People have the right to be offended and express their offence to anything you say. If their offence is misplaced you have every right to point this out to them. Calling them a snowflake doesn't achieve this because you're just dismissing anyone who might be offended by anything. It's a term that is used to describe people who are genuine victims or genuinely incredibly vulnerable as well as people who are being self centred and precious.

I think we are all snowflakes in that we are all special... unique.. well I am especially unique. I am the most special, nicest, most right person on the internet... ever!!!

Snowflake is a perfectly good word that perfectly describes some people. Don't use it if you don't like it - problem solved.

TwitterQueen1's definition is spot on.

@mooncuplanding I absolutely knew you were going to come up with a crock of shite. Absolutely none of those

I've always understood it to mean someone who thinks they are entitled to special treatment, while everyone else just has to get on with things. So parents who don't think their children should have to follow the school rules that apply to the other children, or adults who expect their workplaces and colleagues to bend over backwards so that they don't have to do any of the less fun parts of their job.

I just hate the way it's used to castigate people for protesting about things they care about. Uhm, they're not protesting because they're offended and want to cry about it! They're protesting because they are angry and want to protect someone or something. That's hardly weak and fragile, is it?

Or when people use it against a group whose problems they couldn't understand and decide they must be 'making too much' out of the abuses and injustices they suffer.

It's a total misapplication of something that originally meant someone overentitled and fragile, and it's quite sinister to imply that people are snowflakes for caring about people or important issues.

I thought it came from Fight Club? Tyler Durden's 'special snowflake' speech.

I can’t really get worked up about it. The people who are called snowflakes are usually middle class lefties who dismiss the working class as ‘gammon’ because they have a naughty habit of not thinking what over privileged, wealthy university students tell them that they should be thinking about. So it’s swings and roundabouts.

It's about dehumanising someone so that it's easier to dismiss them. Terms like 'the left' (or 'the right', for that matter) do the same. Mildly disparaging but with plausible deniability that you weren't being rude.

Humans are tribal and, sometimes, we seek to create our own tribes where there are none obvious. It's either 'snowflake' and 'gammon', or start following a football team.

Maybe there are opposing tribes of people - one who think it's all right to be disparaging and the others who don't.

(Posted too soon)

None of those things are remotely related to free speech.

A right to free speech doesn’t guarantee you a platform. You aren’t entitled to an audience. If your views are unwelcome to a person or a group, that person or group is entirely entitled to say ‘we have no desire to listen to you’. Confusing the desire for an audience with a right to free speech is a common but idiotic misconception.

Safe spaces are the same. Why should any person be forced to listen to the views of another? Why don’t you think people have the right to say ‘here in this place I don’t want to hear about X’? Do you think Joe Bloggs should be entitled to go and describe his rape fantasy to women in a rape crisis centre? Or do you think they should be able to say ‘you can’t do that here?’. If you say the latter then congratulations - you believe in safe spaces.

As for trigger warnings - do you also disagree with film age certificates? Do you think the bbc should stop saying ‘some viewers may find this distressing’ before showing footage of blown up children? Because these are trigger warnings we lived with happily for years before the right wing started getting their knickers in a twist about them.

Nobody has a right to an audience. People refusing to listen to you is not a contravention of your right to free speech. You aren’t being prevented from saying whatever the fuck you like just because other people say ‘I refuse to listen to you.’

If you want to really look at contraventions of free speech, why don’t you take a look at Trump’s recent plans to actually limit free speech in law, then come back and tell us if you still think this is an issue of the left.

It’s interesting OP. You’re complaining about being stereotyped as a snowflake but then you’re doing a hell of a lot of rather snobby, lazy stereotyping of people whose views aren’t your cup of tea too.

Perhaps a touch of hypocrisy there no? Unless you think that your views are right so you can say what you want but you shouldn’t have it done to you because you’re some sort of special.....snowflake?

I'm not complaining about being stereotyped as a snowflake. It's clear no such stereotype exists because the interpretation of the word is so ambiguous.

I'm complaining about the stupid people using the word incorrectly. And there are so many others on this thread who have explained it better than me.