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Comment by adamors

6 days ago

Since DEI became a curse word, you cannot say you do anything for women anymore. I think it's pretty clear who the community still is, but with snowflakes running the government, wording suffers.

I so hate that trying to help historically disadvantaged groups some extra help is considered bad. Like I get not making a group extra powered, but to help women in tech or research into Black prenatal care just seems absurd.

“Snowflake” used to be a pejorative to describe the political left…

  • > “Snowflake” used to be a pejorative to describe the political left

    Horseshoe theory [1]. Both the far left and right are thin skinned, constantly engrossed in nonsensical semantic debates and accusing their betters of lacking a sense of humor.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

    • OK. The framing has shifted, though.

      These days, Varoufakis talks about "radical centrists".

      (It's possisble he doesn't actually have a sense of humour and what we're seeing is pure schadenfreude over, eg, the unsurprising stuff that's happening to the centre-left in Sweden right now. Which happened to Starmer, and has yet to happen to Burnham

      But this is maybe only "empirical"--- your wiki link mentions the vulnerability of centrism to elite takeover, and subsequent alienation from the masses. Nod to your "betters")

      9 replies →

  • Snowflake has the weirdest provinance. It was used in Fight Club as a metaphor for individual uniqueness, but because the people who thought Tyler Durden was the coolest thing ever identified with his followers. When Tyler said "You are not snowflakes" they took it to be a positive statement. Snowflake got reinterpreted as a metaphor for fragility.

    Ironicly many of those who use the term are not snowflakes in one of those senses and are in the other, but the opposite of what they believe to be true.

    • > Palahniuk was hardly the first person to use the metaphor. It's the stuff of self-help books and inspirational posters and elementary school assurances.

      > In the 1970s snowflake was a disparaging term for a white man or for a black man who was seen as acting white.

      > In Missouri in the early 1860s, a "Snowflake" was a person who was opposed to the abolition of slavery—the implication of the name being that such people valued white people over black people.

      https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/the-less-lovely-sid...

    • Tyler Durden, Don Drapper, Patrick Bateman, are all characters that you’re not supposed to want to be like but that “blackpilled” men completely miss the point and worship. There must be a name for this type of character influence. It reminds me of the “torrent nexus” trope but for people.

      7 replies →

  • Yes, and it's being used ironically here. The people who pointed and laughed at those who wanted "safe spaces" and overly sensitive, are overly sensitive about people not like them getting any help. "You called us snowflakes, but you're the ones who have the fragile ego."