I am not very keen on inter-generational criticism, whichever way it goes. There is enough divisiveness to go around it seems to me, without age dividing us too.

The fact that a couple of decades can cause a disconnect is hardly headline news, but it seems to me that older generations need to cut the younger generations a little slack. It’s too easy to judge, and, apparently, even easier to forget that we were less than perfect growing up. And that we are less than perfect now.

Draw me!

The origins of the word “snowflake” as an insult are perhaps more complicated that you might think. It was used in the American civil war to refer to someone who did not support the abolition of slavery, which is ironic bearing in mind that most purveyors of the term today are firmly entrenched on the right.

In the 1970s, it was used as insulting term for a white man, or for a black man acting like a white man. Or alternatively cocaine. This must have led to some confusing conversations!

I think that most people know that the most infamous usage of the word in the last couple of decades was from Chuck Palahniuk’s cult novel, Fight Club, later adapted on screen by David Fincher in 1999. But the meaning – you are not special – is a little removed from how it is widely used today.

Get a Tyler Durden body!

Nowadays, the term is defined as one that is used pejoratively to refer to someone who has been “triggered” or has taken offence quickly and unnecessarily, but in reality it is used to be disparaging about someone with liberal views, often in an attempt to shut down those views without the need to engage. It has become all but meaningless because of this. This doesn’t stop it being everywhere, though, especially online, where having meaningful exchanges is a dying art. Substance is lost to cheap point scoring all too often, and “snowflake” is an easy, cheap point.

When referring to the “snowflake generation”, it is a mixture of the Fight Club reference and the easily triggered version. A double whammy!

Source

And I think it is unfair on both counts.

I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with a young person thinking that they are special! They might be. I used to think I was (and I wasn’t even a part of the snowflake generation!), and I am not sure when the penny dropped that I wasn’t. But drop it did, and I think that it is a normal part of growing up. There are special people out there, and I can’t see anything wrong in someone having that belief. Young people should grow up thinking that anything is possible. I don’t want to live in a World where this is sneered at. We get cynical, as we age, and I understand this. I have aged and I am cynical. But why should I get to impose that on others?

The “easily triggered” aspect to the definition of snowflake generation does have more substance to it. A recent example of this was when Friends was put on Netflix – social media complaints about the programme’s lack of political correctness were rife! This may sound a little ridiculous, but there is something in it. I would ask anyone to look back at sitcoms of the seventies and eighties to see how they stood the test of time. Many of them would cause universal outrage in 2018.

Mean source!

This is a generation that has no problem with homosexuality. No problem with transsexuals. No problem with people being whatever they want to be, and socially, it has never been like this before. Friends did deal with these subjects, and viewed through millennial’s eyes, they did it clumsily. This is just zeitgeist in action.

In Ireland – a country that has been traditionally morally conservative since forever – there was a resounding vote for gay marriage three years ago. I heard my children and their friends discussing the vote, and they couldn’t even understand why a referendum was taking place! Why shouldn’t gay people be allowed to get married? How were we in situation where people couldn’t do what they wanted, as long as they aren’t harming anyone?

Children have this ability to speak a lot of sense, sometimes, and that conversation was a wonderful example of progress.

So this is our snowflake generation. They might be special – indeed, some of them will prove to be – and they don’t like it when people are unfairly singled out for being different. They are a generation that accepts everyone, and are willing to stand up and be counted when they see discrimination.

They may go a little over the top sometimes and get carried away, but this is a price worth paying, it seems to me, and is a wonderful antithesis to these post truth, angry and divisive political times. I don’t think us grown ups are doing a great job right now!

(YAY!)