Nowadays, "Snowflake" can mean someone who is easily hurt or offended by the statements or actions of others. It implies they have an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or is overly-emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions. That use of the word probably came from Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996). In the film adataptation (1999), a member of the anti-consumerist Project Mayhem tells the other members:
“Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not the beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. We are all part of the same compost heap."
Palahniuk says that his original intention was to criticise the anti-merit, participation-prize ethos of his education, which left him underprepared for real life.
"...back in 1994, when I was writing my book, I wasn’t insulting anyone but myself...after twenty-plus years in school, I wasn’t smart. To be honest, I didn’t know anything about anything. Instead of learning how to think I’d only learned how to game the system. But the truth was that the system had gamed me. My resume included my high school and college grade point averages, as if that fooled anyone. It included my membership in various national honor societies. My teachers had told me I was smart so now I repeated that mantra. I’m smart! To set the record straight, I was an idiot. Worse, I was an idiot who thought he was smart."
“You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake” became my mantra for deprogramming myself. For shedding those years of false praise. That evil grease meant to skid me along toward my grave with the least amount of effort."
There's nothing new about extended adolescence. Palahniuk was wise enough to realise that his hollow-out education was giving him nothing useful. The collapse in the quality of education has led to large numbers of what could be termed Superfluous Graduates: young people who completed higher education, but are still barely prepared for life as an independent, mature person. They often have no more developed sense of self than someone still being cared for by their parents. There is a sense of weightlessness; that none of their experiences originate from within themselves; and, consequently, of being easily blown about by any strong cultural currents. They are just right for those with mass movements to push.
"There is a sense of weightlessness; that none of their experiences originate from within themselves; and, consequently, of being easily blown about by any strong cultural currents. They are just right for those with mass movements to push." This is a perceptive remark. Well said Dylan.