Learn English – the history and geographic area of the word “finna?”

Warning: pure speculation.

It used to be that time spent connected to the network was very expensive. Back then, dealing with information to be processed offline was to use cheaper cycles to deal with that information. I most commonly hear this phrase in meetings, where a great deal of expensive engineer time is being wasted by details that only relate to 2 of the participants. Thus, taking the conversation offline is a metaphor for having the conversation on cheaper time.

My guess would be that the two uses are completely unrelated, and snowflakes are simply such a common phenomenon that they're bound to enter vocabulary.

At least in the U.S., the personality implications of the word snowflake are pretty clear. Little kids are taught that they and their classmates are like snowflakes; that they all seem very similar from a distance, but each one is special, unique, and beautiful. Because, interestingly enough, it turns out that actual snowflakes do tend to differ significantly in their crystalline structure. There may have also been a component of "delicate" to the metaphor, but since it's been a little over a decade and a half since I last ran across this metaphor in gradeschool, I can't speak to that.

The insult, of course, comes from a few different angles. Off the top of my head:

• You're belittling your opponent by referring to them in terms usually reserved for insecure children.
• You're implying that they've internalized that metaphor a little too well as it applies to them, and have reached the conclusion that they're so very special the world should revolve around them.

Most importantly, none of the angles require any reference to race. They work without that assumption.

The snowflake metaphor taught to children derives directly from the actual observable physical properties of snowflakes, so Occam's Razor says that, in the absence of other evidence connecting the two definitions, they must be assumed to be unrelated since that's the simpler option.

As such, until I'm presented with some convincing evidence that the two are connected at all, I will continue to assume they are completely unrelated.