If an idea is picked up by many people, integrated by them into their worldview and passionately defended, this can only mean that it serves some important purpose for them.
So all of these ultra – sensitive creatures who want trigger warnings, who are traumatized by absolutely everything, who demand emotionally safe environments, and who are hysterically dedicated to the idea that no discomfort whatsoever is to be tolerated – what goal are they pursuing when they adopt this way of being?
People who are not willing to tolerate even the slightest discomfort in their relationships with others will never form profound connections. Profound relationships cannot be built and maintained without experiencing all kinds of uncomfortable emotions at least every once in a while. Deep connections don’t exist in sanitized, “safe”, trigger – warned formats.
So why are all these people trying so hard to amputate their capacity to form profound relationships? Well, remember what we discussed about the fluid lifestyles that accompany the dissolution of the nation-state? Profound connections stand in the way of heightened fluidity, so connections have got to go.
In order to signal that one has become fully immune from profound relationships, one needs to develop the capacity to freak out as publicly as possible, presenting oneself to the world as such a sensitive snowflake that nobody would even attempt to approach.
So when snowflakes freak out about syllabi or the occasional swear word in the classroom? That’s just their way of offering themselves to the market.
Clarissa's Blog 
Maybe it’s me showing my Celtic asshole gene (thanks Dad), but I think trigger warnings are shit. Everything could be considered offensive to someone, so unless you want to live in a real life verify Aesops fable about the two guys and the donkey, people ought to grow a thicker skin
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I agree, I’d never place any trigger warnings on my syllabi. The snowflakes will have to find fulfillment without me. 🙂
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I’m triggered by your post about triggers in a neverending circle of triggers and content notes. I’m going to lie down on my fainting couch, and tweet a selfie so everyone can know how triggered I am and where to buy my makeup and shoes. Also, as a snowflake I’m melting. I demand the planet rotate the other way from the sun right now! Or a freezer. I need to prepare for the post nation state fluidity and it’s frightening me because I don’t want to be actual water! Or melted Margaret Hamilton!
Oh what a world, what a world!
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LOL, awesome 😉
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I am not sure whether the oversensitive snowflakes you describe are the consequence of fluid lifestyles. In fact, it may be the opposite. Being offended, intransigent or inflexible, and announcing it publicly, is a way of saying that one is not ready to change its mind and refuses fluidity in its life.
Anyways, great post.
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Where do the oversensitive snowflakes come from? New York state actually.
Those unpatriotic, post nation state, fluid relationship snowflakes are most prevalent in New York state according to a new study done in anticipation of this year’s Independence Day on July 4th.
“So all of these ultra – sensitive creatures who want trigger warnings, who are traumatized by absolutely everything, who demand emotionally safe environments, and who are hysterically dedicated to the idea that no discomfort whatsoever is to be tolerated – what goal are they pursuing when they adopt this way of being?”
I guess that being ground zero for 911 would do that besides snowflakes like the cold unlike those warm southern conservative patriotic states.
http://wallethub.com/edu/most-and-least-patriotic-states/13680/
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Don’t confuse New York City for New York State. That’s generally what makes polls like that statistically inaccurate.
I’d also not confuse patriotism with being thick-skinned. Some of the most fervid “conservative patriots,” as you call them, are the least thick-skinned people I have ever seen. Conservative groups are more likely to censor books and speech on the basis that it makes them uncomfortable. They’ve “special little snowflakes” since around 1925, long before this phenomenon gained popularity among self-professed progressives. There’s actually been some competition between the old snowflakes and the new snowflakes, as each tries to prove that they are the better snowflake.
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Interesting idea. That’s a lot of steps, though. A would-be snowflake needs to recognize fluidity as an important value, understand that deep bonds run counter to that (despite having limited experience of deep bonds and what they do), and then organize their behaviour so as to achieve something through negating an obstacle.
I know no college student (my past self included) who could consciously go through something that complicated. So I’m assuming un-conscious? But that’d take some pretty early/strong/constant experiences, and ones that are shared across the generation, right? What’re those, then?
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I know no college student (my past self included) who could consciously go through something that complicated. So I’m assuming un-conscious? But that’d take some pretty early/strong/constant experiences, and ones that are shared across the generation, right? What’re those, then?
That question is further complicated by the idea nobody can quite tell when that generation begins and the previous one ends. People have been complaining about overprotected special snowflakes since I was a child.
I’ve linked to this article before from 2006 and I’ll do it again. Say Everything
When I was in high school, you’d have to be a megalomaniac or the most popular kid around to think of yourself as having a fan base. But people 25 and under are just being realistic when they think of themselves that way, says media researcher Danah Boyd, who calls the phenomenon “invisible audiences.” Since their early adolescence, they’ve learned to modulate their voice to address a set of listeners that may shrink or expand at any time: talking to one friend via instant message (who could cut-and-paste the transcript), addressing an e-mail distribution list (archived and accessible years later), arguing with someone on a posting board (anonymous, semi-anonymous, then linked to by a snarky blog). It’s a form of communication that requires a person to be constantly aware that anything you say can and will be used against you, but somehow not to mind.
I have been on the internet in an identifiable way or the other since my mid teens. I only started really getting into internet communities in my 20s. The internet didn’t figure in my infancy or middle school.
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Of course, it can’t be conscious. People adapt to what they observe without stating it explicitly to themselves or others. We mold reality and it molds us right back while we mold it, and so on. It’s next to impossible to figure out what came first, the widespread disillusionment with the fordist model (lifelong careers accompanied by life-long marriages) or the transformation of the economy away from this model. Marxists would say the economy comes first. I’m not a Marxist, so I say culture comes first.
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I think trigger warning get a bad wrap because of oversensitive snowflakes. The oversensitive snowflakes not wanting to be made uncomfortable deserve the mocking they typically get in venues like this. I think originally trigger warnings were just a polite thing to do for the tiny minority of an audience that actually has PTSD from the survival of severe violence. My sense is that those people, who are medically diagnosed and actively getting help from a mental health professional, appreciate the trigger warnings and generally don’t use them as an excuse for their non-participation – they use it as a way to prepare themselves and then struggle through the uncomfortable situation and hopefully learn and overcome their trauma, which is what I think we all want students to do. Most of those types tend to do their own due diligence in making sure they don’t have a panic attack, but appreciate the heads up if some topic wasn’t obviously planned on being broached. Oversensitive snowflakes have co-opted this idea and applied it to every minor discomfort, which has unfortunately devalued trigger warnings in many people’s perspective. It’s a shame, in my opinion, since I do think trigger warnings are a good thing… but maybe I’m too much of a millennial 😉
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The little I’ve read about Bauman’s liquidity, the transition from the nation state to liquidity sounds an awful lot like the problems westerners (including me) had adjusting to Polish reality (until maybe 7 or 8 years ago by which time things changed a lot).
And all i can say is that someone who needs trigger warnings or safe places or to be treated like a special snowflake receiving tons of praise is going to be chewed up and spit out like stale bubble gum in that kind of environment.
I’m starting to detect vast gaps between what the snowflakes are expecting and what they’ll get.
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This is an important point. There is a (very justified) belief that the market wants unique, complex and special human beings who are exceptionally good at what they do and possess interesting, rich personalities. But since this sort of a persona is not available to many people, they substitute it with lots of invented trauma and drama. The hope here is that trauma and drama will stand in lieu of personality but they don’t. As you say, the snowflakes are not going about their goal in the right way. They are trying to fake, and it’s not going to work.
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This is an important point. There is a (very justified) belief that the market wants unique, complex and special human beings who are exceptionally good at what they do and possess interesting, rich personalities.
Oh, that’s where all the repulsive bullshit about personal branding comes from? Some people are exceptionally good at monetizing a persona (Oprah), most people aren’t. I wonder though, how much of this is driven by technology (easier to spill the contents of your head everywhere) and youth (still forming a personality, honestly) and how much of it is a sustained reaction to the fact that most people are interchangeable drones. Trying to be marketable through a persona for most people results in people trying to be safe and predictable and bland. I see this with online dating sites which encourage people to link their Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to their profile. Most people don’t. I can write these profiles in my sleep now. I can’t assume that everyone is boring (because that’s a category error), so I assume that the process itself flattens people into mush.
From the same article:
And after all, there is another way to look at this shift. Younger people, one could point out, are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion. Every street in New York has a surveillance camera. Each time you swipe your debit card at Duane Reade or use your MetroCard, that transaction is tracked. Your employer owns your e-mails. The NSA owns your phone calls. Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.
The thinking goes: If nothing is truly private, and truly yours, why not make money off of it for yourself? You are already public domain. If someone else is already making money off of your stupid throwaway tweets/blogs/cat pics, why shouldn’t you?
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“The thinking goes: If nothing is truly private, and truly yours, why not make money off of it for yourself? You are already public domain. If someone else is already making money off of your stupid throwaway tweets/blogs/cat pics, why shouldn’t you?”
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The Phrase ‘Trigger Warning’ Is Now Also a Trigger
Must use “content warning” instead.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420401/trigger-warning-everday-feminism
Found that at Malik’s post “the importance of feeling uncomfortable”
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/06/30/the-importance-of-feeling-uncomfortable/
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“The Phrase ‘Trigger Warning’ Is Now Also a Trigger
Must use “content warning” instead.”
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