By Chloe Wright

The Masked Singer has plagued my brain. It’s become so bad that I miss it. I tried breaking off this unhealthy relationship with this cursed show to pursue The Bachelor, but it comes out later than my deadline for this article. I can never win with these shows.

However, I have news. This is not a Reality Tea-V article where I talk about either of those things. Before you break down in tears of joy that you don’t have to hear about the degradation of my mental health, I want you to know, dear reader, that I have a treat. I have Snowflake Mountain on Netflix. And guess what? It has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Tea

Today’s tea comes in a cute little package (seen above). My grandma got it for me for Christmas, and I was really happy about the little sprout on the top. The flavor is white ginger pear white tea (basically not as processed and with less sugar). When unpackaging it, the aroma punched me in the face with fragrance galore. ‘Twas lovely. Then the smell progressively got worse. ‘Twas not lovely. The taste? It’s sweet enough to not need a sugar cube, and the note of pear overwhelms the ginger. Somehow the tea itself had a lot of body, and, I believe, was thicker than any tea I’ve had this school year. I would genuinely recommend this flavor. Also, look at that packaging! 

The TV

Here’s the gist of the show: ten “snowflakes” (spoiled Gen Z kids) expect to have a retreat at a luxurious resort, but they are plopped in the middle of a wilderness and forced to attend a survival retreat. After being ordered to choose between all the expensive items in their suitcase that are the most vital to them, the rest of the luxuries are exploded (see above). They cry (also see above). Then, after this purge of material vices, they compete for a sum of money, fight, love, chop down wood, and learn how to be adults. The two hosts are ex-army veterans who put the snowflakes through various challenges, such as cooking for themselves, scavenging for food, and the aforementioned chopping of wood. Throughout the show, the snowflakes learn to grow, gain humility, and spread their wings into the real world.

Being the host of this show sounds like my uncle’s dream job. Y’all don’t know my uncle, but if you did, you’d agree with me. 

What got me off guard was the use of the word “snowflake.” Snowflake? I realized that it was probably dog-whistling to its conservative audience. But the thing is that they use that term, knowing its politically loaded meaning, to refer to … annoying people. They’re just misguided, lazy, and privileged. They change, definitely, but this term doesn’t fit them. It just shows who their target audience–perhaps– is. Confusion, confusion.

While skimming through some of the other reviews, I noticed a recurring theme. I only saw one that was overtly conservative (you could tell with the “gen z woke libs” and the crying laughing emoji with sparing punctuation), but the rest were concerned with how this show was going to help the snowflakes. Let me give you their definition of a snowflake: a spoiled twentysomething who lives with their parents, doesn’t have a job, and parties with no repercussions. The parents send them off to the show à la Worst Cooks in America or Dr. Phil.  

So they throw them in the middle of the wilderness where the average person who works 9-5 to support their family doesn’t… really… go? Maybe not the best move. There’s another show that does this, though, by placing spoiled kids in a more realistic situation. It’s called Summer Job, and the marketing for the show is the polar opposite of the one for Snowflake Mountain. It’s like comparing Survival to Too Hot to Handle.

As for my experience, I enjoyed watching this show for what it’s worth. At times, seeing the spoiled kids improve brought me joy. Not all of them were terrible people (some were miserable), and the adults were firm but fair.  I could get into a whole thing about cultural differences (how in Western cultures it’s taboo to live with your parents and more expected to subscribe to the capitalistic mindset and earn minimum wage like everyone else), and how we should live and let live if these kids want to stay with their parents. But in this world, I suppose we all need to pull up our bootstraps and not let our lives slip away. We only have them for a short amount of time, so it’s time we experience them. Oh, sorry, I got a little philosophical. I’ll get to be more silly and goofy in my next article. Chances are I’ll talk about The Bachelor. Look forward to me making fun of the main guy who said that the Renaissance happened in the 1600s! Okay, he’s fine, but that was just a funny moment.