Modern terminology, i.e. What is a 'Snowflake?' etc.

[marinyork]

[QUOTE 5091481, member: 9609"]indeed i do, up until last night I thought 'Generation X' was something to do with the great Billy Idol.. But I have since narrowed it down and apparently I am from 'Generation Jones' and a think this wiki link

There was no sitting in a warm bedroom playing with an i-phone until you get discovered by the x-factor.[/QUOTE]

Well if we're using wikipedia all the US/UK names I've heard many times. The other countries ones some of these are new to me as an idea.

In Europe, a variety of terms have emerged in different countries particularly hard hit following the financial crisis of 2007–2008 to designate young people with limited employment and career prospects. The Generation of 500 is a term popularized by the Greek mass media and refers to educated Greek twixters of urban centers who generally fail to establish a career. Young adults are usually forced into underemployment in temporary and occasional jobs, unrelated to their educational background, and receive the minimum allowable base salary of €500. This generation evolved in circumstances leading to the Greek debt crisis and participated in the 2010–2011 Greek protests.[61] In Spain, they are referred to as the mileurista (for €1,000),[62] in France "The Precarious Generation", and in Italy also the generation of 1,000 euros. In Portugal, they are also called the generation of 500 euros.

 

[Tin Pot]

[QUOTE 5091452, member: 10119"]Gosh, she's lovely isn't she. Not. If that video turned up on my Facebook newsfeed I'd think really carefully about who I was Friends with. Funny, I'd occasionally heard the term used in the sense that @Tin Pot suggests - to mean someone who is a bit 'precious'. I'm not sure I'd realised quite how much vitriol it carries for some.[/QUOTE]

I don’t think it does, but people like to mask their offensive hatred within acceptable terms. I suppose that once enough people are spreading hate with it, it becomes a vile term but I don’t think we’re there yet - at least in Britain.

 

[srw]

[QUOTE 5091460, member: 10119"]Contempt for younger generations is nothing new, is it?


[/QUOTE]
At least most of us won't be accused of corrupting the youth and sentenced to death.....

 

[User10119]

It seems that

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP5aqAC8PPY

is apparently cited as the source frequently. I thought this was quite interesting though...

But, even though Palahniuk claims to have invented it (and agrees with the metaphor's usage to describe liberals), "Snowflake" as an insult dates much further back, as Merriam-Webster pointed out.
"In the 1970s snowflake was a disparaging term for a white man or for a black man who was seen as acting white. It was also used as a slang term for cocaine. But before either of those it was used for a time with a very particular political meaning. 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. The Snowflakes hoped slavery would survive the country's civil war, and were contrasted with two other groups."
Even though I don't doubt many of the alt-right identified with Fight Club's sad impotent men destroying society to feel powerful, the "snowflake" insult did not begin with Palahniuk. But if Palahniuk wants to believe in alternative facts, he can keep feeling unique and beautiful and take credit for inventing the term.

 

[Vapin' Joe]

I'm not sure it's a particularly generational term. It seems to be an all-purpose insult thrown by the ultra-right at anyone who expresses compassion for someone else - or "humanity" as most of us call it.

That's rather an extreme definition, especially deriding people who use it as "Ultra right". It was originally used to describe those who took offense at any comment they disagreed with, particularly those university students who no-platformed speakers because they did not like their political stance either in general or on any one particular issue.

It has since morphed into a general insult by many on the right against the compassionate viewpoint, as you say. But no more than the term "Racist" is regularly used to shut down any discussion which appears to be deviating from an approved left of centre direction on immigration.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

It was also a term used on TV, in the comedy (of the era) 'Love Thy Neighbour'

Forget the chaps name, but he called the white guy it, which invariably led to more insults, etc....

The thing that people forget about that series, whenever its mentioned (as it may be now?), is the fact that the wives got on extremely well, & left their foolish husbands to themselves