If you’re tired of hearing “snowflake” used as a politically tinged insult you can blame Chuck Palahniuk—and it’s a good bet he won’t care. The author gave the world the sarcastic use of snowflake in his novel, Fight Club, as he recently confirmed to the London Evening Standard:
…[We] called Chuck Palahniuk, author of the original novel, made into a film in 1999, to ask him. Chuck broke the first rule of Fight Club by talking about Fight Club. The term snowflake originates from his book. “It does come from Fight Club,” he confirmed down the phone from his home in Oregon. “There is a line, ‘You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.’”
Palahniuk made it clear to the Standard that his portrait of ineffectual, emasculated men who find themselves through brawling may be more pertinent now than ever before, stating that there is a “new Victorianism” afoot today. “Every generation gets offended by different things,” he said, “But my friends who teach in high school tell me that their students are very easily offended.”
To be clear, Palahniuk reportedly said he believes that this is a problem with people on the left—to whom the “snowflake” insult is most often applied. “The modern Left is always reacting to things,” he told the English paper, but as soon as “they get their show on the road culturally they will stop being so offended.”
He admitted that this was just his “bullshit opinion.”
Palahniuk has proven an astute observer of character and culture. If he thinks there’s too damn much hand-wringing going on, he probably has a point. If only there was some sort of secret club snowflakes could join to recover their aggression and sense of inner strength and purpose…
h/t LES