Special Snowflake - The Terminology

[RedDeadFred]

Someone who thinks they are special and reacts poorly when people think they aren't.

Sometimes the term fits, but most of the time it's just people being angry that there are people with different views than them.

 

[Jux]

-snip-

No doubt. Is it just coincidence or did you know this guy [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view/Calbeck] used to be on the escapist (though it doesn't look like hes been active in a long while)?

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

I used it a lot back in high school to refer to people that needed to be different and special. People that self-diagnosed serious mental illnesses and claimed they were whatever sexuality was popular that season. Bisexuality became the new hot thing at my high school for a year or two. Not a clue why.
Anyway, a bunch of kids suddenly started to come out as bi, which is fine. Unfortunately, a lot of them later admitted they weren't. They just lied about it for attention. A similar thing happened with the same kids when pansexuality became big.
And then there were the ones that came out as trans, threw big stinks when people didn't use the right pronouns, all that jazz.
Years later I run into a few at college and ask how they're doing, using the names and pronouns they and their friends identified as, and they looked at me with confusion.
Not because they didn't remember me, but because none of them were actually trans and completely dropped that whole thing once they stopped getting attention for it.

So yeah, I don't use it for all millenials, or even people with opinions I find odd. I use it on people that have some sort of need to be special, a need to be different, to the point of bullshitting about having schizophrenia, or being pansexual or trans.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Just a note. I have heard use of the term for a long time but not applied in the way it is now. In many of the RPG circles I am part of (both off and on line), a "special snowflake" describes the kind of player that just had to play a very "unique" character regardless of how reasonable, playable or even sane such a character might be. They are distinguished from munchkins because mechanically the character is not necessarily all that powerful, just often bizarre.

Yeah, this is the first place I ever saw it. Sometimes it works, though. Planescape setting, for instance. Even if you're 'from Sigil' ... in a Planescape campaign that treats Sigil as the hub ... you were anything but normal in the slightest. The core book was like; "C'mon... be fantastic, you deserve it!"

But yesh, in your standard Forgotten Realms romp set in Cormyr, the 'special snowflake' had to play a star elf bard banished from Sildeyuir who just so happens to have leadership, and their cohort levels split three ways ... three different characters, to justify having a 4 person band with them at all times and minions to sey up a performance stage. Using magic to transform their lute into something that shatters glass in a 3 mile radius so nobody can *not* hear their wonderful performance roll tricked out with a plus 40 bonus to roll at lvl 6 somehow...

So much so any lvl 6 adventure involving a run of the mill murder plot expanding into a deeper mystery on the frontiers of the Anauroch which *was* designed to give the players access to an derelict keep that needs repairs, near a major trade route to realistically aid their travels and realistically patch over needless accounting like; "Where do we find soldiers? What about food?.." to call their own turns into a crumpled mess of unfinished plotlines in the waste bin.

That was the special snowflake. Hence why when your GM in whatever game you're in calls you it, it was a loose way of telling you; "You know, you should scale back your concept so it fits..."

Then idiots got a hold of the term and ruined it for everyone. Like idiots do.