Internet “Snowflakes” — a Breakdown
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What is a snowflake, in Internet terms? Well, it’s a broad category, so I’ll start from the top and narrow it down until we get to the most important examples.
Someone can be called a snowflake for acting overly sensitive and entitled online, but that is not the best example of snowflake behaviour. The term “snowflake” implies that they believe themselves to be special, but there is nothing special about frivolous calls to action on their own. In fact, it’s really easy to act like that — anyone can do it!
Oh, but what if their proposals are self-centred and illogical? Well, maybe it’s just their opinion! If you don’t like it, you don’t need to live by it! Or you can revise their statement so it becomes more reasonable. A third solution is to respond by explaining the problems with the comment.
But perhaps the snowflake is phrasing their comments as demands. Wait, are you sure that’s what they meant? How would demand even work on the Internet, where most people are hundreds of kilometres away from each other? Online, it’s very easy to misread an innocuous suggestion as a demand. I believe that this is because terms that explicitly express a demand (“you have to,” “I beg you,”) are often used to exaggerate. In these cases, the writer has hope, and they know that it is not urgent, and they don’t want readers to be legitimately concerned about it, but they will phrase it like a demand anyways. This makes it a lot harder to point out a genuine snowflake comment.
So, it is even worth it to be concerned about snowflakes at all?
Well, in my opinion, there are at least two snowflake behaviours that are real problems.
First, when they form a group with like-minded people and work together to make their complaint look more widespread than it really is. They can achieve this through group coordination skills and using multiple accounts. This makes it difficult for PR companies to gauge the true extent of the problem, which increases the odds they will make a bad decision.
And second, when the snowflake can’t deal with criticism, for obvious reasons.
In those cases, there is not much you can do about their behaviour. Though if you want, you can make a comment directed to other readers about the trouble and drama this person is creating.
In other circumstances, you can always try to guide the conversation down a co-operative path. I don’t think calling someone a snowflake is a good way to achieve that, though.
I had trouble finding a related article to give a shout-out to, so I’ll do it for Gregory Russell Benedikt and his article “I Finally Understand Why I Can’t Please Everyone.”
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