NETFLIX: 13 Reasons Why Review

13 Reasons Why | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

The Setting

Let us begin by saying that the show is a good show in that the script was written well, the series flowed, the actors were great. What about the story, though? Being a person, who grew up in a Charles Manson type of family, who suffered one horrendous atrocity after another, starting at the age of four (as far as my recollection goes), I feel that I can be more judgmental. The story is from our snowflake generation. It is about a girl, Hanna, who had some difficulties in school, which she felt was beyond her abilities to deal with, so she kills herself. However, before doing so, she makes 13 tapes for twelve people she felt was culpable in her difficulties in life so they could walk through an audio of how she got there. Before I begin what I feel to be the main lesson in this show, let me just say bullying, mistreatment of others is extremely wrong and should be punished. Also, suicide is tragic and heart wrenching. In no way am I taking away from those facts!

The Snowflake Generation

Generation Snowflake, or Snowflake Generation, is a term used to characterize people who became adults in 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. The term is considered derogatory.[1]

“Generation Snowflake” may be derived from the term “snowflake”, which has been used in referring to raising children in ways that give them an inflated sense of their own uniqueness. This usage of “snowflake” may originate from Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel Fight Club, and its 1999 film adaptation. Both the novel and the film include the line “You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.” In January 2017, Palahniuk claimed credit for coining this usage of “snowflake.” adding “Every generation gets offended by different things but my friends who teach in high school tell me that their students are very easily offended;” Palahniuk has called it “a kind of new Victorianism.”

The term “Generation Snowflake”, or its variant “Snowflake Generation” is thought to have originated in the United States. It came into wider use in the United Kingdom in 2016, particularly after Claire Fox, founder of the think tank the Institute of Ideas, published a book called I Find That Offensive! In it, she wrote about a confrontation between Yale University students and faculty Head of College, Nicholas Christakis. The confrontation arose after Christakis’ wife, Erika Christakis, a lecturer at the university, had suggested students should “relax a bit rather than labeling fancy dress Halloween costumes as culturally insensitive”, according to Fox. Fox described the video showing the students’ reaction as a “screaming, almost hysterical mob of students”. Fox said the backlash to the viral video led to the disparaging moniker “generation snowflake” for the students.[2]

The term “snowflake generation” was one of Collins Dictionary’s 2016 words of the year. Collins defines the term as “the young adults of the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offense than previous generations”. Similarly, in 2016 the Financial Times included “snowflake” in their annual Year in a Word list, defining it as “A derogatory term for someone deemed too emotionally vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own, particularly in universities and other forums once known for robust debate” and noting that the insult had been aimed at an entire generation.

Generational Differences

According to Fox, members of Generation Snowflake “are genuinely distressed by ideas that run contrary to their worldview;” they are more likely than previous generations of students to report that they have mental health problems. Fox and journalist Bryony Gordon described these traits as being coupled with a strong sense of entitlement. According to an article titled “The ‘Snowflake’ Generation: Real or Imagined?” from the John William Pope Center reasons proposed by researchers for the reported increase in mental health problems among university students differ. They vary from increased pressure on students, reduced self-reliance resulting from overuse of mental health services, to university authorities’ expectations of student fragility.

Fox argues that Generation Snowflake was created by over-protecting people when they were children and she argued the emphasis on self-esteem in childhood resulted in adults “tiptoeing around children’s sensitivities” to avoid “damaging their wellbeing”. In the UK, Tom Bennett was recruited by the government to address behavior in schools. He commented that Generation Snowflake children at school can be over-protected, leading to problems when they progress to university and are confronted with “the harsher realities of life”. Bennett argues being sheltered from conflict as children can lead to university students who react with intolerance towards people and things that they believe may offend someone or toward people who have differing political opinions, leading to a phenomenon called “no-platforming,” where speakers on controversial topics such as abortion or atheism are prohibited from speaking on a university campus.

In 2016, some law lecturers at the University of Oxford began using trigger warnings to alert students to potentially distressing subject matter. This drew criticism from Fox and GQ writer Eleanor Halls, who related the phenomenon to Generation Snowflake, and questioned how well law students educated with trigger warnings would function as lawyers. The university had not adopted a formal policy on trigger warnings, leaving their use to the discretion of individual lecturers.

The negative connotations of the term Generation Snowflake have been criticized for having been applied too widely: Bennett also commented: “It’s true that, for some of these children, losing fast wi-fi is a crisis and being offended on the internet is a disaster…. But then I remember the other ones, and I reckon they all balance each other out.” Richard Brooks wrote in The Daily Telegraph that “students have always been instrumental in turning the tide of public opinion,” and Mark Kingwell, philosophy professor at University of Toronto has objected to the use of the term to characterize political protesting as “whining,” in response to protests by Millennials following Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States.

Serena Smith, writing for The Tab says the term “Generation Snowflake” shows “Millennials can never win” because they are either stereotyped as politically disengaged, or they are called “snowflakes” when they do engage politically. Smith also states: “most, if not all, of these comments on ‘special snowflakes,’ originate from the baby boomer generation—i.e. the generation that kicked up the biggest fuss of the 20th century: the 1960s. A generation that led a sexual and cultural revolution, now telling us that we’re whining for trying to make our voices heard? It seems slightly hypocritical.”[3]

The Reality Is Yey to Be Felt

The weak minded young ones that we have been raising that are in expectation of everything and offended by everything, are unable to cope in this wicked world that we live in, so they melt under the smallest pressure. This author as a child and youth suffered enough trauma, by all rights, he should have committed suicide a hundred times, or become a serial killer. Yet, here he is penning this article. In time, the youth of today will be running the world, a world that is filled with imperfections at every turn. They are not prepared to cope with such pressures of a job at McDonalds, let alone run a country. The liberal progressive mindset, the owe me generation, coupled with the expectation of everything generation is the reason children struggle to cope with the rigors of life in a world filled with imperfection. Without generalizing too much, the 10-24-year-olds committing suicides are not coming from young ones living in inner cities, or the poverty-stricken areas of Appalachia.

They tend to come from communities that are stable, lower middle to middle income. Why? I would argue that young ones who are born into a life of a difficulty have the advantage. They are fighting both literally and physically from the moment that they take their first breath. They are not handed things without having to work for them. They are not pampered. The moment they complain about their lot in life, which is actually extremely tragic, they are smacked in the back of the head by a parent, who lets them know ‘life is unfair and only one person can change the path or the outcome.’ Why is it, what is it that brings a teen in a well-off suburb to commit suicide because of online bullying, while a teen born into a poverty stricken home where the mom is a drug addict, the father is in prison, starving half the time, violence in the streets and at school, with more atrocities in one day than their counterpart in a month, does not commit suicide? It is calluses. Just as our hands form calluses when we do hard work with them, so too, our mind, soul, and spirit grow calluses when we are subjected to a hard life. Does this mean that we should force our children to live a hard life even if we have the finances to do otherwise.

Training a Child From Infancy

Nothing should come easy for any child, even a child with rich parents. They should understand who is the boss of the house from the start. They should have respectful and reverential fear of their parents. Not because the parent beats them, although corporal punishment is fine if it is not abusive. Their love and respect come from a living and just parent. They know you love them whether you are praising them for a good grade or tanning their backside for playing with matches. They should have chores in the morning before school and after school. They should be trained is respectful behavior toward others. They should do homework before all else. They should get a job at an early age. They should not receive lavish gifts. Parents are responsible for the necessities of life, anything outside of that, except holidays, comes out of an allowance for chores, or a job. Even billionaire parents should have their children do these same things.

[1] Collins English Dictionary. Retrieved 31 March 2017.

[2] Fox, Claire (2016). ‘I Find That Offensive!’. London: Biteback Publishing. ISBN 978-1-849-54981-3.

[3] Generation Snowflake – Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Snowflake (accessed March 31, 2017).

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