Talkin' 'bout my Generation

Millenial Snowflakes

Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the 1996 novel Fight Club, is often credited with the modern pejorative use of “snowflake”, but this has been questioned. 

The term “special snowflake” was used pejoratively to refer to young people who are allegedly overly convinced of their own uniqueness and individuality (like a snowflake).

The term “snowflake generation” was popularized around 2016 and refers particularly to a generation seen as being less resilient and more likely to take offence. 

Fight Club

Now watch the following clip from the 1999 film Fight Club. Transcript and vocabulary below. 

Think about the following questions: 

1. What do you think Tyler means by ‘the middle children of history’?
2. Tyler would be Gen-X in the film. Do you think he represents the voice of his generation? Or of an older generation? Or both?
3. Fight Club was written in 1996. The film is from 1999. Do you think this speech is still relevant today? Why? Why not?
4. Do you think your generation has an equivalent film about generational angst? 

Transcript: 

I look around, I look around, I see a lot of new faces. Shut up! Which means a lot of you have been breaking the first two rules of fight club.

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

Vocabulary: 

to squander  - to waste 
pumping gas – distribute petrol at a petrol station 
wait tables – to work as a waitress / waiter 
to be raised on – to grow up with a specific input (to be brought up on) 
to break a rule – to do something you shouldn’t (eg. talk about fight club) 
to bend a rule – to break a rule in a way that is unimportant or not harmful 
white collar workers – typically office work (you might wear a white collared shirt)
blue collar workers – work involving manual labour (you might wear blue jeans / dark, durable clothing) – offensive in some contexts.