So, chances are that you’ve come across people calling other people “snowflakes” before — it’s become an especially prevalent insult over the last few years. The snowflake insult is most often used by people with conservative political views to refer to people with liberal political views. Essentially, calling someone a snowflake is meant to imply that that person is too delicate to handle “valid” criticism and considers themselves to be special and unique — like a snowflake! 

While conservatives have referred to liberals as “snowflakes” for years, TikTok users have found a way to use the insult without having to spend too much time typing on their phone keyboard: They just leave a snowflake emoji in the comment section. You’ll also come across snowflake emojis in Twitter threads and other online interactions. 

People use the emoji as a way to shut down a discussion, essentially saying the equivalent of “you can’t handle criticism or my very smart brain, so I’m just going to call you a snowflake and then leave.” Obviously, it’s super effective and immediately hurts the feelings of whoever is being called a snowflake. Nah, just kidding. Most people agree that a snowflake emoji is a lame and pretty lazy way of pretending to engage in discourse.

At this point, after being called “snowflakes” for years, many liberal-leaning people have embraced the term. After all, there are certainly worse things than being branded as someone who *checks notes* cares about other people’s feelings? There are even people who use the snowflake emoji in their social media profiles as a way to proudly claim their snowflake-dom.