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I have yet to meet a "snowflake" here on this site.

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  • cmacqcmacq Member UncommonPosts: 331
    Quizzical said:
    As I understand it, the origin of the "snowflake" insult is as follows.  In the United States, most universities have been politically on the left for decades.  Most universities won't take official stances on most political issues, but most of the professors and administrators are on the left, and this inevitably colors some decisions that universities make.

    When you perceive that most people in the area are on the same side as you on an issue that you perceive as very important, there's always the temptation to censor, bully, or otherwise punish those who are on the other side.  That can happen with politics, religion, or any other issue that people get really fired up about, and has historically happened with many different sides of many different issues.  Most adults are mature enough to refrain from trying to destroy anyone who dares to disagree with them even if they could, but not all are.

    And so, some radical left-wing students want to bludgeon anyone who dares to disagree with their political views into submission.  The precise details vary, but it could mean kicking them out of the university or whatever if they refuse to recant.  It's only a small fraction of students who want to do this, but it's an example of the common phenomenon of a small, vocal minority getting a disproportionate amount of attention.

    At some point, someone figured out that using the vocabulary of safety would sometimes get cowardly or sympathetic administrators to do what they want.  Basically, if you claim that hearing particular opinions that contradict your own is unsafe for you, they might force those contrary opinions to go away.  Uninvite speakers, implement speech codes that threaten to punish students who contradict your views, sanction professors, fund some partisan project, or whatever the demands of the day are.

    Once they figured out that that sometimes works, that creates enormous incentives to copy the methods that worked elsewhere.  If the campus radicals had figured out that standing on their heads while reciting the alphabet backwards would get them what they wanted, we'd see a lot of that behavior, too.  And so, it quickly became common for them to claim that whatever it is that they disliked made them feel unsafe.

    Some commentators on the right saw this (or more likely, heard or read about it from afar), and responded by insulting the students as "snowflakes", basically saying that they're too fragile and need to toughen up.  Thus, it became common for those on the right to hurl the "snowflake" insult at those on the left.

    But that misdiagnoses the situation.  The left-wing campus radicals aren't going to spontaneously combust upon hearing a contrary opinion.  They can handle it just fine.  They want to censor the people they don't like because they want to censor them and think they can get away with it.  A more descriptive insult sometimes hurled at the same people is "crybullies".

    So what does that have to do with this site?  Political topics are banned here, so the sort of contrary opinions that would supposedly upset the "snowflakes" are already banned--as is their own side of the same issue.  This thread, and especially this post, is pushing the boundaries of that line.  I've really tried to avoid throwing out anything politically incendiary in this post, trying to explain rather than to inflame.

    But that does lead to my conclusion above:  how do you know that you haven't met a "snowflake" on this site?  For the most part, you don't know what the political views of the people here are, nor what they're willing to do about their views.  Because we don't debate hot-button political issues here, partisans with a wide variety of opinions may well be able to get along.  What matters is what you think about MMORPGs, not who you voted for in the last election.

    And that is as it should be.  We should be able to get along with people who disagree with us on some issues.  We should be able to cooperate with such people on other issues.  That's the whole point of banning political topics here.
    Naw I'm sorry. You're saying the term snowflake is tied to a political point of view? As someone who spent an entire career working at a university, I never heard the term used even once in that regard. Several others have posted it's meaning in this thread more accurately. It can be used in a political way but also can be applied in a myriad of other situations.
  • HashbrickHashbrick Member RarePosts: 1,851
    What i learned today...  No one really knows what snowflake means, but try to explain it anyway.
    [[ DEAD ]] - Funny - I deleted my account on the site using the cancel account button.  Forum user is separate and still exists with no way of deleting it. Delete it admins. Do it, this ends now.
  • MyrdynnMyrdynn Member RarePosts: 2,479
    snowflake...anyone that says wahhhhhhh russia!!!!!!!!!!
  • ChildoftheShadowsChildoftheShadows Member EpicPosts: 2,193
    Arterius said:
    I didn't read every comment before writing  this so perhaps someone has already did so, if that is the case I apologize.

    As someone who lives in the U.S. as a Independent I would say that there are no such things as "Snowflakes." No matter where you look Movies, TV, Gaming, and even Politics. 

    Someone may say that someone who wants a easy mode in Sekiro is a snowflake but I would say the people who waste there energy arguing that fact are also "Snowflakes." To me a snowflake is someone who easily gets his feelings hurt or angry about something. This is just my two cents though. People could easily disagree.


    More like, "I'M DIFFERENT AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND RESPECT IT!"
    [Deleted User]Ridelynn
This discussion has been closed.