The Snowflake Generation? A Response to Thoughty2

hello everyone today i'd like to talk about a narrative the narrative of the snowflake generation which actually has a wikipedia page i was surprised to learn a term used to characterize the young adults of the 2010s as being more prone to taking offense and less resilient than previous generations or as being too emotionally vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own now in this video i'll explain why this characterization is not true sort of almost completely made up actually and assisting me today by providing a textbook example of this argument is 42 a youtube talky man with 2.4 million subscribers i'll be taking a look at his video entitled why is everyone getting so offended currently with close to 650 000 views now as always i'd encourage you to watch his video first so you can be sure i don't his argument which i understand goes as follows so 42's video starts off with him identifying the snowflake generation a group of quote ultra politically correct far-left militants who were offended by absolutely everything he then gives an example of a time when he says political correctness had fatal consequences by talking about the 2009 fort hood shooting arguing that the attack could have been prevented but that political correctness stopped the us army from taking action he then moves on to talk censorship of comedians and comedy shows such as monty python and faulty towers he then argues that comedy should have no bounds and that criticizing offensive comedians amounts to censoring their freedom of speech 42 then talks about how due to the snowflake generation social media use advertisers don't want to advertise on shows that are deemed too offensive citing youtube as an example and mentioning his own channel as one that's had videos demonetized for not being advertiser friendly he then moves on to say that being offended is natural and people have always been offended by things but the difference today is that the snowflake generation millennials are acting entitled you see they've apparently grown up in a time free of violent war oppression and poverty and as a result they don't know what it's like to not get everything they want he then moves on to talk about how he's offended by instant coffee but it would be ridiculous of him to campaign against it or try to get it banned then 42 spent a while talking about the recent court case in scotland where internet personality count dankula i will never get tired of saying that was fined for making an offensive youtube video then he closes out with a rousing speech about standing up for yourself against the evils of political correctness set of footage of a man running on a beach and punching the air triumphantly like what's with that you know what's he doing he just hates political correctness so much that's 42's video anyway sorry i don't know his name so i'm just gonna have to call him 42. uh so what do we think well i have two points to make in response essentially and i can just tell you them both right now so firstly as 42 points out people have always been offended but his point about the millennial snowflake left being more entitled than previous generations that doesn't hold any water i'm afraid the previous generations were just as prone to acting entitled as millennials sometimes more so i'd argue secondly 42 attributing this offended entitled behavior to people on the quote far left is at best totally arbitrary and at worst betrays a severe bias as we'll see it's incredibly easy to find a counter example on the right wing for every behavior that he attributes to the left so spoiler alert that's my counter argument there it isn't just people on the left and it isn't just the current generation but don't take my word for it of course let's go back through 42's video now and make those same two counter arguments repeatedly and slower so we'll start with a minor point admittedly here 42 leads out by saying he doesn't usually make this kind of opinion based video being more used to making fact-based videos like what facebook really does with your data the strange habits that will make you a billionaire how one man sold the eiffel tower twice the ugly truth about tipping and so on i trust you notice the thumbnail theme so why do i mention that here well at the start of his video while 42 is introducing the topic of discussion the snowflake generation who are dominating social media with their incessant entitlement he shows a series of flashing images of scrolling social media feeds which you might imagine would display the sort of thing he's talking about but if we do a little freeze framing we can see it's actually things like the twitter page of a camera gear company a finnish film production company what appears to be a search for the word awesome you know innocuous random things like that now the point you might make here is if these offended snowflakes are so ubiquitous on social media why not show some of them to evidence the claim you know why instead use unrelated stock footage like you would in a video where you weren't making a serious political point for instance now i get it he's talking about social media so he includes some social media stock footage it's not directly relevant to his points but it sort of suggests itself to be relevant it goes by too quickly for the viewer to notice anyway it's just a little video editing trick i'm not even complaining about it really and it's not a point worth making by itself but stick with me i am going somewhere with it i promise i want now to talk about the following two clips that 42 includes in this video as he's describing the ultra pc far left militants he shows this clip of some sort of rally or protest in london so are these our offended snowflake generation well let's take a look zooming in on this image we can make out the flags of unite and unison which are the two largest uk trade unions now they organize for workers rights among a whole bunch of other things unison were founded in the early 90s and mainly represent public sector workers like teachers nhs workers and so on elsewhere in this march we see a guy fawkes mask and signs that say we are the 99 percent things associated with the occupy movement which was itself largely a reaction to increasing economic inequality so what's my point here well it's telling that when 42 later tries to provide his own example of something he could get offended about he picks something totally inconsequential that people drink instant coffee but all of his actual examples in the video of so-called far-left millennials are actually people being offended if you can even call them that about things that are anything but inconsequential you know these people are marching for their rights as workers they're marching against economic inequality those are hardly trivial topics so there's two video clips there that don't quite line up with what 42 is saying so let's look at the next one is the third time a charm let's see so as 42 is explaining how the far-left militants are quote hell-bent on campaigning for a cause for people they've never even met he shows this clip of a crowd at a rally again it goes by fairly quickly about all you have time to notice is the palestinian flag in the center so naturally you assume this was some sort of far left rally in support of palestine or such like and that must be what 42 is criticizing however if we pause the video we can see a few other interesting things in this crowd now who am i kidding we can see one other interesting thing in this crowd the speaker now most of you will have noticed by now yes it is that is alex jones noted far left millennial snowflake alex jones uh no of course this is far right conspiracy theorist infowars 911 trooper alex jones and i love when i find something like this you know when i saw it was alex jones speaking there i wanted to open a bottle of champagne so this clip is from a speech that alex jones gave at the 2013 bilderberg fringe festival where he denounces globalists whatever that means a fellow speaker was david ike a british conspiracy theorist who believes that an interdimensional race of reptilian beings called the archons have hijacked the earth and that a genetically modified human archon hybrid race of shape-shifting reptilians also known as the babylonian brotherhood you get the point so what does this mean well 42's error in evidencing his claim actually disproved his claim this isn't a far-left rally populated by people offended about something insignificant it's actually a far-right rally populated with people offended about the reptilian takeover of our planet so hardy-har a mistake was made again not that big of a problem by itself but it fits into a larger trend of 42 not providing evidence of this supposedly ubiquitous snowflake generation and this is true of the first example of the negative effects of political correctness that he talks about at the fort hood shooting so on november 5th 2009 a u.s army major named nidal hassan carried out a mass shooting on a military base in texas killing 13 people now following the attack there were investigations into how hassan's radicalization was not acted upon earlier and the attack prevented for example hassan had exchanged emails with a known radical islamist and was investigated by the fbi but they concluded that there wasn't enough information to warrant a larger investigation of him 42 lays the blame for this failure to prevent the attack at the feat of political correctness of course now i'd be skeptical of that myself given that the us army has in recent decades invaded and occupied muslim majority countries in the middle east so not offending muslims doesn't seem to be all that high on their list of priorities but whatever the reason for the fbi or department of defense failing to prevent the attack what i would like to ask does the attack have to do with the people 42 has been talking about thus far the snowflake millennial lefty crowd because i don't know if 42's noticed but those people tend not to join the military or the fbi and they certainly don't run the military or the fbi i mean are you telling me a bunch of army generals are like well we can't fire the muslim can we imagine what they'll say about us on tumblr and 42 elsewhere says that the power of the snowflake generation lies in their ability to appeal to advertisers to not associate with people or brands that aren't politically correct but that pressure doesn't really apply to the department of defense does it you know hashtag boycott the u.s armed forces doesn't really work if you want to blame political correctness for this you can't pin that blame on millennials or the left because they're not dictating fbi or dod policy now this also holds true for the arrest and trial of count dankula so let's talk about that for a little while first off i've never liked how this was reported this case everyone always puts the pug front and center which you know why wouldn't you i get that but at wager it was more likely that meechan was arrested because he put out a video in which he repeatedly says seek heil and gas the jews while giggling that's the offensive part of that video you know not anything he taught the dog to do anyway i don't personally agree with meechan being arrested i think there's enough people online saying gas the jews completely seriously for the justice system to occupy its day you know arresting meechan was a waste of time and resources if you ask me i also don't agree with him receiving an 800 pound fine though the fact that he received 100 000 pounds in donations afterwards means that i'm probably not going to be losing any sleep about it anyway in isolation me and 42 agree here about the nazi pug trial so why am i talking about it well it's because the fault lies with the justice system the police that arrested mechan and the courts that prosecuted him and again a little something about millennial far-left militants they tend not to like the police very much and they certainly don't run the court system you know this incident has no place in the video about the quote snowflake generation because they didn't have anything to do with it if anything this is an example of the opposite meechan himself a millennial was prosecuted by members of the previous generation censorship by government is the problem not censorship by young leftists there's no examples of those people censoring anyone in the video let's look at this starbucks example so as mr 42 is talking about the power of the snowflake crowd which he says is the ability to rant and rave on social media about brands not being politically correct he shows this article from the mail online a starbucks hit by cascade of negativity after ordering staff to talk racism with customers vice president forced off twitter etc now this article concerns starbucks much ridiculed race together campaign where store workers were asked to discuss race relations with customers ordering coffee now this isn't an example of a brand doing something not politically correct and offending millennial sensibilities this is an example of a brand attempting to market itself to those sensibilities and failing because its idea was incredibly lame you know people on social media made fun of it because it was ridiculous so what's 42's point here does he think that the race together campaign was a good idea and that social media users shouldn't have mocked starbucks for it also i mean it's starbucks i think they'll probably be okay you know they were criticized but they weren't censored if they self-censored in response to criticism that's their decision freedom of speech goes both ways they're free to say whatever silly thing they like but we can't expect them to be free from being criticized for it and also 42 is doing the exact same thing he's complaining about here he's criticizing millennials for criticizing starbucks so if he thinks starbucks are being censored by that criticism then i claim that the people censoring starbucks are themselves being censored in turn by 42. who i am now censoring because i'm criticizing him one could argue and if you criticize me for that then you're censoring me it's all terrifically confusing it's just a rather odd point to defend some mega corporation against online mockery you know why would 42 get offended on behalf of starbucks they never asked him to do that it seems his delicate sensibilities can't handle a little light online mockery it's just like a millennial to take to social media to complain about comedy hey it's just some jokes 42 comedy should have no bounds after all speaking of comedy let's carry on talking about comedy 42 says that quote more so than ever comedians are having to censor their material so as to not offend their audiences or face censorship more so than ever there being a little rhetorical flourish that actually makes the sentence into a lie 42 mentions ricky gervaisian now i don't remember ofcom ever censoring ricky gervais i remember him being under investigation for calling susan boyle a quote mong which he was cleared by ofcom for their statement said this involves ricky gervais evoking the words offensiveness to some extent and challenging the relationship between the offense and the word itself we considered therefore that the nature and focus of the routine provided a clear editorial context for its use at the time now i disagree with ofcom there but that doesn't really matter here does it the point is that your face wasn't censored the government's communication regulator cleared him now because i'm a very old man i also remember back in 2002 when the precursor to ofcom the broadcasting standards commission upheld a complaint about gervais for doing a routine about genitals on a lunchtime radio show on a saturday which you know is fair enough isn't it you know i'd imagine even mr comedy should have no bounds over here would agree that actually a comedy should have some bounds like i shouldn't be able to go and play a louis ck routine to a classroom of five-year-olds i think we'd all agree there does need to be some standards there 42 also mentions the pythons and particularly john cleese's sitcom faulty towers for having a section of its episode the germans edited out of earlier broadcasts for containing a bunch of racial slurs now whatever you think about that the pythons are an odd choice to mention in a section where you claim comedians are today more censored than ever for example here when monty python's movie life of brian came out in 1979 it was banned outright in several countries including parts of the uk john cleese and michael palin engaged in a debate on the show friday night saturday morning in 1979 where they defended the movie from charges of offensiveness and blasphemy so how old exactly is the snowflake generation you know were they around getting movies banned in the 70s it's this guy part of the snowflake generation this is why 42's point about millennial entitlement doesn't make any sense there's absolutely nothing new about this entitled behavior lots of people felt entitled to try to get the movie banned and they did and it's another example of 42 artificially aiming his criticisms at just one political wing at the expense of the other he also mentions youtube demonetization citing himself as an example but one particularly hard hit section of youtube is people who make content for an lgbt audience videos about trans issues for instance are notorious for being demonetized quickly and they're hardly something you'd expect the ultra pc millennial left to be protesting are they a similar point can be made about stand-up comedians now when noted left-leaning british comedian stuart lee wrote a musical called jerry springer the opera offended religious groups took to the streets to protest it and when the bbc broadcast the show it received 55 000 complaints and lee and the bbc were threatened with prosecution so again acting entitled and trying to get offensive things banned is not a behavior exclusive to the young nor is it a behavior exclusive to the left if you've noticed i'm basically just making the same two points over and over again here you're going to have to deal with it i'm afraid i do have a question to ask though following on from that last point when you hear someone refer to people who are supposedly too easily offended why don't we think of people like this or like this or like this why don't we mean people who call the police on a black person for having a barbecue or sitting in a coffee shop or selling water or mowing a lawn why don't we mean gamers who blow their tops about seeing a woman or a gay character in a video game trailer you know why do we give bigotry a pass in the narrative of the easily offended we say that's just a racist that's just someone who hates lgbt people that's just a misogynist that's just a religious fundamentalist but the millennial snowflake left they're offended for no reason whatsoever and i don't like this for a few reasons firstly it implies that there's some rational unemotional basis for bigotry and second of all it implies that the left have nothing rational to say being driven purely by random emotional outbursts which is of course the reason why this narrative exists to push that idea as far and wide as possible utilizing hapless chaps like 42 here but when you look at what the supposed snowflake generation are actually talking about it's workers rights it's minority representation economic equality and so on there's nothing in this video on the level of triviality is being offended by instant coffee at 42 closes out his video with speculation as to why the current generation are apparently so offended and entitled and he says it's because they've never known what it's like to not have everything they've never known war or oppression or poverty they're spoiled basically now i imagine there's plenty of young soldiers in the military who disagree readily with this youtube chap telling them that they've never known war given you know all of recent history but even besides them this idea that the current generation has everything too easy is just complete rubbish compared to their parents millennials have lower average wages they work longer hours they have less stable jobs they're in more debt they pay more in rent they pay more for houses they're less likely to be promoted they entered the workforce around the time of the worst economic downturn in a century if they're angry if they're emotional they've got reasons for that even the person that was unflatteringly screen capped for the thumbnail of this video in order to represent the typical offended millennial well i went and found where that's from and they're arguing at a rally with a trump supporter who's just called immigrants rapists now that's a political argument it's a valid reason to be offended and to get angry just like your rights as a worker being threatened or your reproductive rights being threatened or your rights as an lgbt person being threatened or the reptilian illuminati who control the banking system if you dismiss political activism as belonging solely to the easily offended and overly emotional you've been sold a false narrative designed to neutralize you by someone probably an older and richer person than you who'd prefer it if you just kept quiet and did what you were told so that's about it from me today folks am i really going to close out with a call back to the lizardmen thing uh yes i am going to do that i hope you enjoyed this video and if you didn't that's because you're offended by what i have to say and maybe you should work on being a little more rational thanks as always to all my supporters over on patreon who pay for these videos even though they're free no one tell them that though please i'm kind of dependent on the income at this point if you'd like to join them please feel free the feeling of triumph after signing up is akin to running along a beach and punching the air in joy if that goes any way to persuading you i also have a twitter and a curious cat if you fancy sending me a question also yes i know this video isn't the video i said i was gonna make next uh but i changed my mind because i saw alex jones in the clip earlier and i was like oh i have to make that video uh the other video is on the way though i promise i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm such a failure

Channel: undefined

Views: 944,601

Rating: 4.6662917 out of 5

Keywords: shaun, thoughty2

Id: FhuFWoN1nb0

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 01 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/MemioliRavioli]

In the past year, I went from a T_D browsing "mad, liberals? top kek!" kind of person to the opposite of that, and a lot of that is thanks to Shaun. Especially his videos on Paul Joseph Watson, Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux made me realize just how full of bullshit the 'influencers' I followed were.

I'm sure I'm not the only one. Shaun's doing some great work with his channel.

Also, Dankula is such a fucking idiot. Really no surprise he joined UKIP.

[u/Fishb20]

I'm very disappointed, I used to like a lot of Thoughty2's stuff back in 2015 :(

[u/REbr0]

God damn Shaun is so good.

Does anybody know if he’s thought about making podcasts of his videos? I know for me personally it’d be awesome to drive to work listening to it.

[u/RosaReilly]

I like Shaun but his videos are so dry, almost to the point of tedium.