Chuck Palahniuk — author of the novel Fight Club, which spawned a cult classic film by the same name — says his book and the subsequent film are responsible for popularizing the use of the term “snowflake” to describe coddled people.
“It does come from Fight Club,” Palahniuk told the Evening Standard. “There is a line, ‘You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.'”
The phrase “Snowflake” has been adopted by conservative commentators to describe the contingent of whiny, self-absorbed millennials whose war on free speech on university campuses has become cause célèbre thanks to a disproportionate amount of media attention.
To be sure, Palahniuk has noticed this phenomena of the “easily offended.”
“There is a kind of new Victorianism,” he said. “Every generation gets offended by different things but my friends who teach in high school tell me that their students are very easily offended.”
Palahniuk’s warning to liberals in the Age of Trump is to simply “stop being so offended.”
“The modern Left is always reacting to things, once they get their show on the road culturally they will stop being so offended.” He explained. “That’s just my bullshit opinion.”
Former Breitbart News executive chairman and Trump senior adviser Stephen K. Bannon often characterized Breitbart News reporting as embracing themes of Palahniuk’s classic novel.
“We call ourselves ‘the Fight Club.’ You don’t come to us for warm and fuzzy,” Bannon told The Washington Post this year.
Nowhere in his description did Bannon mention snowflakes, however.
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