Author Chuck Palahniuk has addressed his coining of the term "snowflake" as an insult in a new interview where he also claims "toxic masculinity" doesn't exist.
He's penned several acclaimed novels including Choke and Survivor, but it's his debut - 1996's Fight Club and the film adaptation by David Fincher - that is acknowledged as having the greatest impact on modern Western culture.
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Palahniuk spoke at length with MEL Magazine, confessing he never intended the way he used "snowflake" to be used by right-wing pundits to insult liberals.
"You know, you want people to adopt the thing... once that material passes on to an audience, the audience adopts it. It will become the child of the audience and will serve whatever purpose the audience has for it," says Palahniuk.
"It would be insane to think that the author could control every iteration or every interpretation of their work."
Beyond the "snowflake" term, Fight Club has been cited as an inspiration for the notorious alt-right and men's rights activist movements, which annoys Palahniuk - but not for the reasons you might guess.
"I feel a little frustrated that our culture hasn't given these men a wider selection of narratives to choose from. Really, the only narratives they go to are The Matrix and Fight Club," he says.
"We have very few narratives that question reality, and give people a way to step outside of it and establish something new. I feel bad that people have such slim pickings to choose from."
The MEL Magazine article, written by John McDermott, labels the ideologies inspired by Palahniuk's work as "toxic".
"If [Fight Club anti-hero Tyler] Durden were alive today, he wouldn't inspire Project Mayhem - he'd be wearing a Make America Great Again hat, leading a group of disaffected young men through the streets with pitchforks and staging #GamerGate-esque online harassment campaigns," writes McDermott.
However, in the article, Palahniuk himself argues that toxic masculinity may not exist at all.
"I'm not sure if I really believe in it," he says.
"It seems like a label put on a certain type of behaviour from the outside. It's just such a vague term that it's hard to address."
Palahniuk released a graphic novel sequel to Fight Club from May 2015 - March 2016.
Newshub.
