The snowflake syndrome is the modern means of building a minority political bloc - for any underrepresented group or condition, a representative comes along and declares themselves champion of the people(the people that they represent, that is), and encourages shaming of the rest as a form of unification.<p>It&#x27;s the shaming that eventually got to me. It&#x27;s such a prolific and harmful tactic. The people who do it the most tend to lack virtue themselves, when held up to the light. And it doesn&#x27;t matter how well your internal sense of guilt works - you can always be judged poorly for reasons that become obviously unfair when pushed to far-reaching conclusions. It encourages you to polarize into a completely fanatical or disengaged state, without a healthy middle. If we&#x27;ve improved any, it&#x27;s in that outright dehumanization is less common now, replaced with convenient euphemisms that diffuse blame.<p>Stoicism has the appeal of &quot;It doesn&#x27;t matter how bad the outside world gets - I am going to do my own thing and fix up my own principles and actions.&quot; It encourages you to work on small everyday behaviors instead of constantly diverting your attention to the Big Important Problem that the news is currently pushing at you(and that you can&#x27;t do much about, without derailing your entire life).