How was "special snowflake"/SJW culture created?

trianglecrisps · 9時間前

I agree with other posters who mention individualism and the "self esteem" generation.

Also, as a political phenomenon, I think it arises from the fact that real political change is very difficult to achieve, and the problems of today are so immense that most leftists have given up on tackling the big questions. Global capitalism, the mass media and its propaganda, governments with their heat-seeking missiles and high-tech police forces - fighting these things as a citizen is pretty much impossible. When you look at something like the french revolution, and other movements throughout history, the actual logistics wouldn't be possible to do in today's world.

So instead of focusing on the hard stuff, lefty-inclined types focus on the easy stuff, like language and representation and all the other snowflakisms.

transfasc_mod · 10時間前

Neoliberalization of the university system. An answer conservatives won't want to hear. The root cause wasn't the extreme left, it was the corporate Right.

When you run a university like a corporation, what happens? They become increasingly litigation and conflict shy. Hence: safe spaces and no contradiction allowed to students no matter how dumb or extreme they get.

This is poison to education, because going against received notions is necessarily painful and messy.

This podcast lays it all out.

https://shadowproof.com/2015/09/27/podcast-university-inc-the-policing-of-speech-on-american-campuses/

williamwilliamitwas · 8時間前

I believe it is definitely tied to our current version of capitalism. If everyone is special and unique, well that requires you to purchase plenty of crap to differentiate yourself and show how awesome and unlike other people you are.

TheNewGarry2 · 7時間前

As many pointed out, I don't think students being extreme lefties is anything new, but wanting to get school admins involved is. It's also way too convenient given the goals of neoliberal universities. Anyway- very important work on this topic that addresses this, this is what made me consider this. This got shared already here but I can't emphasize this enough http://shadowproof.com/2015/09/27/podcast-university-inc-the-policing-of-speech-on-american-campuses/

About the Berkeley protests- in retrospect I don't think Bob Reich's theory that the black bloc guys were collaborating with Trump is completely, 100% implausible. http://truthdig.com/report/item/a_yiannopoulos_bannon_trump_plot_to_control_american_universities_20170205

Given that this is a feminist sub some of the occasional blaming parents in the face of massive structural inequities seems kind of odd to me.

unicornliberation · 8時間前

the other posters summed up pretty well why this type of culture developed. for me, it all started with yourfaveisproblematic.tumblr.com (the sjw culture was still evolving at the time - it was only a year before that blog that ppl started discussing gender & race on tumblr), from then on 'problematic' became a term that was widely used on tumblr. most of the talk was about reverce racism, cultural appropration, basic feminism. then somehow things like being genderfluid and all that shit started slipping on the site. i assume that since most of the users were priviliged white middle-class americans/westerners, labeling yourself as 'genderfluid', 'trans', 'demigirl', etc was a way to stand out and seem special and oppressed, too. something i've found interesting is that most of these people struggle with mental illness (mostly self-diagnoses, but often you'll find people listing about 15+ illnesses), which makes the community quite toxic (saying this as someone who also struggles with mental health). people now even have whole pages where they write down their priviliges and their identities. oppression olympics, ya know. 'trigger warnings' were being used by women who have been raped, now a trigger warning can mean everything that makes you feel a little uncomfortable. it's sick that this type of thinking is seeping into mainstream media (buzzfeed being the most vocal media- i have no idea why i still visit the damn site).

meanwhile, here in eastern europe we're just laughing and making fun of the fact that you can label yourself 'they'. (:

ps. i've also noticed that A LOT of americans are unhappy and dissatisfied with their lives, even while being more priviliged than most of the world and having more resources. so there's that. i think that's a factor, too.

meanoldlezbean · 6時間前

Some of these answers have me scratching my head.

First, for those of you who aren't American: individualism is a core American value and has been since this country was born. I just read "Farmer Boy," a class children's book that extolls the virtues of small-town conservative America, and an entire chapter is devoted to praise for the main character's father who says and does whatever he pleases to whomever he likes because he's "free and independent" and the master of his own destiny. This is a good Christian book we give to seven year olds and it was already nostalgia when it was written a written a century ago.

So, that's nothing new.

I'm also confused by this notion that Millennials invented the "special snowflake" phenomenon. I'm a Millennial and I remember people complaining that Baby Boomers came up with it during the self-help craze of the 70s.

They passed it on to us with the whole "everyone is a special and unique snowflake" speech we got in kindergarten, when we got our first lessons in respecting everyone's dignity and personhood.

"Snowflake" is used in a sneering way because most of us learn at some point that the adult world has limited patience for individual dignity and personhood. But I would like to preserve respect for dignity and personhood as cultural value that we teach our kids.

"Snowflake" is a loaded term right now as well because of the people who tend to use it. Lately, when I get called "snowflake," it is usually not because of any particular viewpoint or set of politics I've ascribed to, it's because I've said something critical about the 45th President of the United States, which is not hard to do because he openly praises war criminals on Twitter. It's basically a way to shut down opposition without having to think very hard.

But if you're talking specifically about the far-left tendency to invent new oppressions based on sub-sub-sub identities... you might enjoy this article, which made the rounds about four years ago:

"The Problem With Privilege" by Andrea Smith https://www.google.com/amp/s/andrea366.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/the-problem-with-privilege-by-andrea-smith/

The article is worth clicking on but in short, she argues that the "confession of privilege" convention that became typical in activist circles created a subculture in which being oppressed gave you social status-- so the goal of activism became the pursuit of social status through inventing new forms of oppression instead of attempting to end oppression through addressing the root causes of oppression.

Or, to put it another way: activist subculture went mainstream.

I think she's right. I've become wary of people who spout social justice language to make themselves look more enlightened than other people; I call them social justice scenesters and I avoid them. Not hard, since they rarely show up for anything.

clearglassofwater · 7時間前

I don't think waxing nostalgic is really constructive on this topic so I'm going to say I think it's accelerated capitalism/individualism, collapse of women's liberation into the third wave, feelings of helplessness and alienation both in the world and in local communities leading to anxiety, confusion, individual indulgence, trying to take back control.

endthewoo · 11時間前

American wealth, decadence, consumerism, cultural imperialism + the internet.

endoftheliner · 10時間前

Individualism wrought monstrous. If you can't get rich and famous in America, fake it with something else, but never, ever, allow yourself to be just a regular "vanilla" working person, female or male. Get rich and famous on Youtube! On TV talentless shows! Doing stupid animal tricks! Promoting style over substance! Or get rich and famous promoting an absolute fraud of an ideology in which you can be the opposite "gender" (sex, that is) of what you were born. Defend yourself to the death, if you have to lie, cheat and steal to accomplish what you set out to do.

It took some other western countries a while to take this on (while competing with their own cultural values), but many, through globalized capitalism, are entwined with the concept now.

Kalipest · 7時間前

I think the snowflake thing just err... snowballed really. It started out as a group of good people who were genuinely interested in inclusivity and social awareness. Once it got rolling, it became a conduit for supremely narcissistic behaviour. Basically, the SWJs got drunk on power.

Want to shut someone down? Accuse them of oppressing you - don't even need to prove it, simply self-identify as a member of an "oppressed" group. The more obscure and "oppressed" your group is, the more YOUR voice deserves to be heard. So. Gay is not enough. Gotta be a panromantic asexual demi-boy with self-diagnosed autism.

Want to shut someone up? Declare their point of view "problematic" and either reply with deliberately obtuse jargon-laden argument, or perhaps, if you're feeling lazy, just throw an insult and tell them that it's not your job to "educate" them.

It's quite funny that they declare their opponents "literally hitler", because if anything they themselves prove how good people can find themselves in the midst of an incredibly toxic ideology (just as did plenty of perfectly normal Germans in the 40s).

Likewise, when they talk about wanting to create "safe spaces", what they really mean is that they want the power to designate and control spaces. It's really quite colonialist in nature.

I think a lot of the "snowflake SWJs" will look back on this time in their life and cringe. And that's fine; they are young and young adults are and have always been faintly ridiculous (my goth phase was quite regrettable.)

What is more concerning (and who are more guilty, in my opinion), are the adults who have let these young people use their power-tripping temper tantrums to inform public policy and denigrate the academic culture of university campuses.

120716 · 3時間前

Misdirected empathy without critical thought is another piece of the puzzle in the creation of this culture. As an impressionable young adult, one who tends to believe their point of view is correct and everyone else is wrong, hearing (misleading, false) stats such as 1 in 12 transgender people are murdered can easily elect sympathy and empathy for transgender people if one doesn't apply critical thought. SJW culture also doesn't seem to understand one can ask questions about or criticize an ideology without hating people who follow that ideology – one can criticize religion without hating religious people, one can criticize transgender ideology without hating transgender people.

Fallenstarrynight · 9時間前

It started in the 1990s. I was a kid in the 1990s, so here is how I see it:

The 1990s marked a time when people were obsessed with counseling and psychology. Many books and tv shows around that time centered on the human psyche.

(Another symptom of our psychology craze was the vastly over-diagnosed and over-prescribed ADD/ ADHD. Many, many children were given Riddilin.)

It was at this time that there were many books on how to parent to ensure a healthy child who wouldn't have all those mental issues you saw on tv all day long. Overwhelmingly the answer was to show overt approval of ALL this your child did. The child was always special, always to be fawned over. This led to what many people today blame as the cause of this phenomena, Participation awards.

Participation awards are a good symbol of what went wrong. They show the belief of: Always award your child even if they did nothing to deserve the praise. The problem is, what started as a way to stop self-doubt created a generation of people who think they are special and inherently superior to all those around them.

susannunes · 4時間前

What really did it was the rise of "postmodernism" and especially "queer theory" in academia.

Poison, complete and total poison.

dotinaline · 1時間前

For me it was made possible by a few things.

1) I was miserable and trying to figure out who I was as a young adult. Typical, but I think this precondition explains like 95% of the horrible/annoying things people do. People are super alienated right now. That's not new, but now there's...

2) The internet, and the way it magnifies/cultivates certain personality disorders. You can find "information" on anything. You can look very, very into any given thing you might feel or suspect. All sorts of thoughts that could otherwise be let go of or worked through are utterly nurtured if only you seek it.

3) I needed feminism, for a lot of personal and broader societal reasons, to make sense of things. The feminism I found was already third-wavey but in a fairly innocuous way at first. It helped me a lot for a while but over the years I witnessed it evolving into something much less useful very quickly.

4) A deep, burning desire to make the world a fairer and better place. Maybe this is because of idealistic 90s children's programming? Maybe it's because of being raised by Baby Boomer adults? It was in no small part because of being socialized female at least.

5) Understanding that patriarchy had wreaked a lot of havoc in my life, it was very easy to see how systemic racism was also something I should accept as something I wanted to do something about. I think this was an accurate judgment. But that same desire to do good by oppressed people can be easily manipulated to cater to every other person's stated needs (and genderism's histrionics are so loud/manipulative/contagious due to low barrier to entry that it's very easy for it to take disproportionate priority).

The other day I listened to this podcast with 3 women who left the Quiverfull movement and was struck by something a woman said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fee6eqIDACw

She said something along the lines of that she had relatively normal problems (she was in a dysfunctional, abusive relationship) and was looking for a way to understand it, to fix it. A solution that was presented to her at the right time was: submit to your husband's God-ordained rule and everything will be great!

Like devoted Quiverfull women, idealistic, passionate young women will literally destroy themselves in the name of what they perceive to be the greater good. Heck, given that young men have been led to war like this since time immemorial, this might be a universal human tendency.

I didn't get excessive adult attention as a kid and I remember knowing participation ribbons were stupid and thought they were kind of insulting... I'd just throw them away. So I don't think a real explanation is nearly so cutesy.

It's a confluence of a lot of things. People need answers, and since most religious and civic institutions have failed to adapt and account for so many things, people are looking for something else to go in that spot where religion would go.

The truth is, life is just hard. For some reason we don't have an adequate shared cultural understanding of that, so people try to solve their problems by adopting solutions that feel comprehensive. And the more the ideology/cult/lifestyle change/whatever asks of you, the more likely it is to feel deliciously (deceptively) effective. The dramatic changes make the solutions feel effective for a while but at the end of the day life is still really hard and always will be to some extent.

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