Special Snowflake

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About

Special Snowflake is a derogatory term widely used on Tumblr to describe someone who often whines about deserving special treatment or sees oneself as exceptionally unique for no apparent reason, similar to the use of the expression check your privilege in the social justice blogosphere.

The term has also been used beyond Tumblr in other contexts both on and offline, including Reddit's /r/SpecialSnowflake.

Origin

On October 15th, 1999, the film Fight Club^[1] was released. The film features one of the protagonists, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) telling the men looking to join the fight club:

"You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake."

One of the earliest instances of the term online was posted on February 28th, 2003, by theMC Journal^[3], which published an article titled "You Are Not a Beautiful and Unique Snowflake Fighting and Ideology in Fight Club."

Spread

On August 15th, 2006, LiveJournal user invisibob used the term in a post titled "Worlds Apart (Percy Weasley)" in which he explains:

"Beginning with the knowledge that each of us is a unique and special snowflake, the “leap of faith” made by Percy Weasley in choosing to believe Fudge’s word over familial suspicions failed majorly because of the nature of his family.

On February 20th, 2008, Urban Dictionary^[2] user Bathsheba added an entry for Special Snowflake defining it as:

"A member of that newly-adult, me'er-than-me generation which expects attention and praise just for being themselves -- doing anything to deserve it is completely optional.

On October 12th, Yahoo Answers ^[4] user aloha.girl59 added the thread "What is "special snowflake syndrome?" asking:

I've noticed this in a few posts recently and would like to know exactly what it means. I think I have an idea; would just like clarification.
Thanks! :)

User magic pointe shoes replied:

"It's a phrase used on livejournal communities a lot. Basically every snowflake is special and unique. And then someone who is a special snowflake thinks they are even more special and unique than the others and deserves more special treatment. Except if all snowflakes (people) are special and unique, we are then pretty darn ordinary and usual."

On November 3rd, 2009 NYC Educator published an article titled "Snowflake Syndrome" which focused on the phenomenon in education.^[7] On June 20th, 2011, HelloGiggles^[8] published an article titled "Special Snowflakes." On November 13th, 2013, Mommyish^[6] published a post titled "The 9 Types Of Special Snowflake Children Who Aren’t Special At All."

/r/SpecialSnowflake

The subreddit /r/SpecialSnowflake was created in 2019. The subreddit was place for posters karma so they could meet the karma threshold requirement for posting on the more popular /r/dankmemes. On /r/SpecialSnowflake, aspiring posters to /r/dankmemes, called "special snowflakes" can post once a day in order to receive karma from others in the community.^[9]