ABOUT:
Special snowflakes is a term to refer to people who whine about deserving special treatment.
ORIGIN:
Originally taken from a line in “Fight Club,” where Brad Pitts character says, “You are NOT unique and special snowflakes!”
SPREAD:
The term became popular in forum posts to criticize people who get their feelings hurt easily, demand special treatment or ask for certain comments be taken down. (Often comments calling them special snowflakes.)
AUTHORSUNITEDBATTLEAGAINSTAMAZON
The term has come to increasingly refer to the demands of Douglas Preston, and his group Authors United, that Amazon give special treatment to traditionally published writers since writing books is a special activity.
Clay Shirky on the demands by special snowflakes: https://medium.com/@cshirky/publishing-and-reading-6a80139d13cc
JA Konrath says writers are not special snowflakes: http://jakonrath.blogspot.ca/2014/09/nonsense-united.html
Roxana Robinson flips out that she isn’t a special snowflake: http://bloom.bg/1ybSQfG via @BloombergTV