This is a terrible metaphor.
Wherever you go, there you are.
It's like the saying, "Your keys are always in the last place you look." (Yeah, because you stop looking for them at that point.)
Not sure why you guys think it’s a bad metaphor. I think it’s pretty apt:
An insignificant event by itself, the fall of a single snowflake, is given credit for being the trigger of a major, calamitous event, an avalanche.
Despite how much it may be trending on Fishy’s apps, the linked piece is an op-ed written by a local, former journalist to a minor, regional newspaper, certainly a minor event in the UNC academic fraud scandal.
Hopefully, “trending on Fishy’s apps” is the first visible sign of the avalanche that ends with major penalties for UNC.
They cheated in the worst way, by undermining the very purpose of the university: to educate.
I found it hideously ironic that the earlier investigation ended with the NCAA basically saying that the fictional classes, created to help athletes, were not an issue because non-athletes also enrolled. To me, that made it more of an issue—fake classes for athletes infecting the broader academic institution.