Snowflake generation or just misunderstood millennials?

Actor Brad Pitt in a scene from the 1999 film Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk has often been credited with coining the pejorative use of “snowflake” in his 1996 novel Fight Club. I’d love to tell you more about it but there are some very strict rules … just kidding.

The quote in question – “You are not special, you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone, and we are all part of the same compost pile” – also appeared, albeit slightly altered, in the 1999 film adaptation starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.

Palahniuk claimed credit in 2017, adding that millennials exhibit “a kind of new Victorianism”. He later clarified that he never intended “snowflake” to be an insult. It was a way for Palahniuk to erase the constant praise he’d encountered in America’s education system, which he said had rendered him an “idiot” who was poorly equipped for the world.

“A lifetime of disingenuous, one-size-fits-all praise had kept most of my peers from pushing hard to achieve any actual triumphs, and therefore we had no internal sense of ability or potential,” he wrote in an essay for Entertainment Weekly.

“You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake; became my mantra for deprogramming myself. For shedding those years of false praise. That evil grease meant to skid me along toward my grave with the least amount of effort.

“My use of the term ‘snowflake’ never had anything to do with fragility or sensitivity. It just meant that I wasn’t going to be dismissed as just another mass-produced ‘genius’. Most of the time I haven’t a clue. I’m still an idiot, but at least I know that much.”

Twenty five years on from Fight Club and the lexicon has forgotten these nuances. Snowflake is regularly tossed around online as shorthand for oversensitive millennials (those aged between 27 and 39). No, not because they’re happy to acknowledge climate change.

It’s a diss to describe someone “allegedly too convinced of their own status as special and unique people to be able (or bothered) to handle the normal trials and travails of regular adult life”, according to Merriam-Webster.

Extinction Rebellion climate change protesters march in London. Picture: AFP

Which is miles from Missouri in the early 1860s, when a snowflake was a person opposed to the abolition of slavery; and the roaring 20s when it was a colloquialism for cocaine.

Are Millennials precious little snowflakes with no sense of humour? Surely people like that exist in every generation. I think I’ve probably met two or three snowflakes in my life, which is enough to shut down Sydney’s train line, but hardly a blizzard.

And while I don’t identify as a snowflake, my soon to be 92-year-old grandfather sometimes makes me feel like one. He delights in reminding me of his draconian school days when he was caned on the fingertips for not keeping his eyes on the blackboard. It didn’t bleed, but his fingers turned black. Later in life when working as a school caretaker, he remembers finding the teachers’ annual order for 200 canes.

My grandfather was 13 on the night of May 31, 1942 when three Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour. “We were in the pictures at the time at Merrylands,” he recalls. “The bombing sirens went off all over Sydney. They stopped the picture. They said that ‘we’ll keep running the picture or you can go home’ and keep your tickets for another session. We stayed on and watched the picture through.”

The movie in question? He can’t remember. These days he spends his time watching and re-watching The African Queen (1951), while he waits for his Covid vaccine.