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Religion Unplugged believes in a diversity of well-reasoned and well-researched opinions. This piece reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily represent those of Religion Unplugged, its staff and contributors.

(OPINION) We tend to pay attention to news that impacts us most directly. So for Americans, the culture war playing out between religious and some nonreligious traditionalists and social progressives is most compelling.

Halfway around the world, however, another building struggle over religion and culture has heated up yet again. This one has direct international ramifications and has the potential to negatively impact global religious-political alignments, perhaps as much or more than Americas nasty cultural war.

It also contains an important lesson about the possible consequences of governments and politicians employing divisive culture war tactics for political gain (more on this theme below.) I do not think it absurd to fear that our homegrown culture war could become just as bad, or worse.

Im referring to India, a constitutionally secular nation wracked by interreligious conflict between majority Hindus and minority Muslims. Christians have been caught in this imbroglio, too, but put that aside for the duration of this post.

Heres a recent overview of Indias situation from The Washington Post. And heres the top of that report:

NEW DELHI After a spokeswoman for Indias ruling party made disparaging remarks about the prophet Muhammad during a recent televised debate, rioters took to the streets in the northern city of Kanpur, throwing rocks and clashing with police.

It was only the beginning of a controversy that would have global repercussions.

Indian products were soon taken off shelves in the Persian Gulf after a high-ranking Muslim cleric called for boycotts. Hashtags expressing anger at Prime Minister Narendra Modi began trending on Arabic-language Twitter. Three Muslim-majority countries Qatar, Kuwait and Iran summoned their Indian ambassadors to convey their displeasure. The governments of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Afghanistan on Monday condemned the spokeswoman, Nupur Sharma, as did the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Inflammatory comments by right-wing activists and political leaders in India often make headlines and spark outrage on social media. But rarely do they elicit the kind of attention that Sharma drew in [early June], which sent her political party and Indias diplomats scrambling to contain an international public relations crisis.

Lets step back from the news coverage for a moment to consider some underlying dynamics and their impact on journalism.

Culture wars, to my mind, are in essence political struggles in which one group seeks to impose its values, structures and narrative its world view, in short on another. At least, this is the way the term is used in most mainstream coverage, as opposed to the actual work of the sociologist James Davison Hunter who wrote the most influential book on this topic.

Individual and societal values drawn from religious sources provide the ammunition for clashes over gender and sexuality issues, religious tolerance and intolerance, acceptable speech, immigration and other hot-button topics spurred by todays unprecedented rate of social change.

Americans have seen how ugly culture wars can become when electoral politics are caught in its talons. Witness the vitriol that dominates the news out of Washington and various state capitals these days.

Witness the level of culture wars manipulation that occurred under former President Donald Trump of course pro-MAGA conservatives will argue that progressive Democrats are the problem. And witness what happened in Idaho, where 31 anti-gay demonstrators were arrested for allegedly planning to riot at a gay pride parade last Saturday. The Coeur dAlene incident underscored how dangerous Americas culture war has become and what we might expect more of.

The situation in India the worlds largest Hindu-majority nation with the third-largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan is arguably even worse. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party have long been accused of rallying their Hindu nationalist base by sowing, for example, Hindu fears about Muslim men seducing Hindu women.

In truth, many Muslims seem no more accepting of Hindu-Muslim unions than are Hindus. This Hindustan Times story from May underscores this reality.

Heres a bit more explanation from the Post piece to which I linked above.

The (insult) controversy highlights one of the challenges to Indian foreign policy at a time when Modi is seeking a greater role on the world stage: Although his government has cultivated strong diplomatic ties with many Muslim nations, including both Saudi Arabia and Iran, his party has come under growing criticism for its treatment of Indias Muslim minority. It is accused by rights groups of stoking Hindu nationalist sentiment and turning a blind eye to religious violence.

India under Modi has been quite deft in dealing with the Muslim world, but this was almost inevitable, said Sumit Ganguly, a professor of political science at Indiana University. At home, a lynching takes place and Modi remains deafeningly silent. Now, he feels compelled to act because he realizes the damage abroad could be extensive. When it comes to foreign policy, the stakes are high.

The Indian government has sought to downplay a string of local religious controversies in recent months, including a ban on headscarves for female students, the razing of Muslim neighborhoods after communal clashes, and efforts by Hindu nationalists to reclaim high-profile mosques (that were once Hindu temple sites).

To better understand Indias complicated religious landscape, read these two partisan pieces. The first is from an Indian Hindu perspective. The second is from a Muslim viewpoint, featured at Religion News Service.

Whats my bottom line? Governments and groups that stir conflict by focusing on religion and culture, for their own preservationist desires, are playing with fire.

Examples abound: From the American Civil War to Nazi Germany, from Israel and Palestine to Northern Irelands Protestant-Catholic troubles, to Myanmars treatment of its Rohingya Muslims and Chinas claim that its minority Muslim groups all represent a terrorist threat.

The reality is political leaders have long perhaps always used so-called culture war tactics to harden their support. Is it worse today? I cant really say.

What I can say, however, is that the deadliness of modern weaponry a category that includes the internet as well as tactical nuclear weapons raises the specter of culture wars becoming bloodier than ever. That includes the United States of America because were no smarter about these incessant problems than are Indians or any other of the other nationalities mentioned here.

That, dear readers, should worry you. It should also make you wonder about the responsibility journalists have in this issue.

My take is that its not enough to just regurgitate manipulative comments from leaders on both sides and then call it fair and objective journalism. I think we need context and the courage to challenge those who care more about careers than the country.

Walking that path is, of course, far from easy. It has its own set of problems that are far too complex for me to detail here. But if you simply give additional serious thought to this issue, Ill consider my work here done.

This piece is republished with permission from GetReligion.org. Ira Rifkin is an award-winning journalist and author specializing in the intersection of religion, culture, and politics, with special emphasis on globalization. He was formerly the news director of Belief Net, a Washington-based national correspondent for Religion News Service and has contributed to many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun and others.

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What Responsibility Do Journalists Have When Covering Incendiary Wars About Religion And Culture? - Religion Unplugged

The culture wars can seem all-consuming. They certainly consume corners of the advertising industry pretty regularly. For example, a recent update to the famous Netflix culture memo insists that Netflix will not "censor specific artists or voices". Addressing workers, it said if youd find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you. For The Drum's Creativity in Focus Deep Dive, Patrice Pollack of Momentum Worldwide looks at how to tread the line between free expression and respecting marginalized voices without stifling creativity.

There is a culture war taking place where mainstream media has become the battleground, and advertising is very much a part of that media. As a result, we currently walk a blurry line; do we work to reflect a larger experience, or do we maintain the status quo?

If we accept, as an industry, that advertising fuels culture and culture fuels advertising, then we need to continue pushing the boundaries of free speech and self-expression. We ultimately try to seek out and expose the experiences that shape the targets truth; to show what it is to be human and illuminate that which gets overlooked and create something that connects with as many people as possible. Sometimes, frankly, that is uncomfortable. We know that freedom of expression doesnt make us free from consequence, and the consequences of that discomfort can hold us (and clients) back.

Maintaining comfort, however, means maintaining the status quo, and that also means excluding those truths that are so necessary to break through and transform culture for the better. Those truths are ones most of us want to see.

The Edelman trust barometer shows that businesses are more trusted than governments, NGOs and media, and that most people believe that most of us aren't capable of civil discourse. Having a different perspective, being more diverse and inclusive, and speaking to the truth of consumers lives (and the role we play in them) isnt divisive or risky. Its simply (or not so simply) the truth. Exposing truth quite literally sets us free.

So why is it that 'progressive' is said with a sneer when the fact is that we have progressed? Imagine if brands still portrayed women like they did in the 50s, if dad was still the disengaged parent or if the nuclear family was the epitome of normal? Imagine if we listened to the few that scream, No! Keep it this way!

We often take the feedback we get online - which is polarizing and, in many cases, skewed towards sensationalism - as being reflective of the full picture of societys beliefs. Yet only 23% of Americans are on Twitter, and only 25% of those users produce 97% of Tweets. That's less than 20 million people. But the most vocal among us aren't necessarily speaking for all of us. In fact, they speak for very few. And social medias accessibility to the global community even furthers that discrepancy.

The largest group of people, the people that live in the middle ground, arent being heard at all. As advertisers, we need to work with our clients to make space for quieter voices to be heard and then reflected upon. We need to steer clear of perceived safety, because that safety is actually quite dangerous, not only for brands, but for the progression of culture.

So how can we walk away from making normal even more normal? How can we be brave enough to continue pushing (or progressing)? We can start by asking ourselves if exposing the brave, bold truth can be done without harming anyone and including more of everyone. If we can do that, then the work we do can make a positive impactboth on the business and on the world. Not an easy feat, but it's why we're all here, right?

To keep up to date with our coverage head over to the Creativity in Focus hub.

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What Is Advertising's Role In The Culture Wars? - The Drum

Pizza Hut is drawing fire in some quarters for the reading selections used in its highly successful Book It! program, a 38-year-old initiative aimed at turning kids into lifelong book lovers. The stuff is too left-leaning and disrespectful of traditional values, say the critics.

And thats not even the jaw-dropping example of restaurants susceptibility to the culture wars, according to this weeks Working Lunch podcast. Co-hosts Joe Kefauver and Franklin Coley look at the creation by Republican congressmen of an alternate U.S. Chamber of Commerce thats more in line with their style of capitalism.

The stated mission of the new The American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce is to push back on the woke type of capitalism promoted by the actual Chamber.

Its classic Beltway gamesmanship. But, ask the Align Public Strategies principals, will the gambit land restaurant executives and other corporate leaders in a political tug-of-war with the GOP?

Listen to what the veteran lobbyists have to say about that situation and the other political challenges facing the business, including the landmark Fast Act that advanced in California last week. Youll find this episode and all the installments wherever you get your podcasts.

Members help make our journalism possible. Become a Restaurant Business member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.

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Restaurants catch their share of flak in the culture wars - Restaurant Business Online

Joel Folkemer is an unlikely politician. A pastor in southern Pennsylvania, Folkemer spends his free time coaching his son's baseball team and helping with his daughter's dance troupe.That changed in 2020, when the all-white, Republican-led Central York School District banned 300 books and resources designed by a diversity committee to foster anti-racism after the murder of George Floyd murder. The ban, which the school board called a "freeze," was so wide that it covered texts about civil rights icons Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.

Community members encouraged the 37 year-old Folkemer, who as lead pastor of Union Evangelical Lutheran Church in York, Pennsylvania, has long spoken out against racism, sexism and other efforts to "divide communities," to run for a seat on the nine-person board. Initially reluctant, Folkemer changed his mind after speaking at a student-organized rally protesting the ban.

"I eventually said yes because it wasn't about me but serving the community in which I live," he said. "It was about working for justice, equity and inclusion for our students and the staff."

Folkemer and his fellow progressives who ran with him in 2021 aren't alone. There's been intense interest in school board elections over the past year, fueled mainly by a fervor among conservatives to push cultural issues over school re-openings and masking, as well as diversity issues such as gender identity and how or if racism should be addressed in schools. The intensity of these debates has galvanized candidates on both the left and right to run for school board seats.

While there's nothing new about culture wars bleeding into local politics and schools, experts say this time is different due to the coordinated campaigns fueling these debates and the deeply partisan divide that has emerged on both sides. The fights also come at a time when the institution of public education itself struggles to navigate a post-COVID world in which large numbers of students suffer from learning loss and mental health issues and teachers and administrators suffer burn out that's leaving schools severely understaffed. These clashes also come ahead of what is expected to be a heated midterm election in November.

Joel Folkemer and his wife campaign for his seat on the Central York School District in southern Pennsylvania in 2021.

"The level of coordination and the financing from outside groups as well as the use of social media to spread a very consistent message is what makes this particular moment so different," said Rebecca Jacobsen, professor of educational policy at Michigan State University. "What is frightening is that we're now seeing national style politics in our largest and most trusted public institution, schools. I worry that trust will erode, especially as schools are faced with some really big challenges that have nothing to do with the national political and cultural issues in many of these races."

Two years of pandemic-related chaos has put school boards all over the country in the hot seat. In many places, the decision to return to in-person learning and whether to mandate masks fell to school board members, who are usually elected and unpaid officials.

Since the early days of the pandemic, frustrated parents and community members began showing up to school board meetings across the country, turning what are usually boring, bureaucratic meetings into shouting matches reflecting the wider cultural and political wars being waged. Protests began over school reopening plans and mask mandates. But they quickly morphed into debates around banning books and dismantling equity initiatives around gender identity and antiracism efforts.

The result has been a huge influx of interest in running for school board, which is way up nationally. This year the number of candidates running for office is up 17% compared with 2020, according to Ballotpedia.

"The issues riling people up -- CRT, sex education, book bans -- are tangential to the real problems facing schools."

Jon Valant of the Brookings Institution

Conservatives have been at the forefront, seizing the moment with national leaders inserting themselves and their views into the school reopening and mask debates and then fueling the pivot to hot-button culture issues. That's making issues like critical race theory, an academic construct that looks at the consequences of systemic racism and that isn't taught in K-12 classrooms, a catchall rallying cry for anything having to do with discussion of race or equity.

For Tammy Nakamura, who in May won a seat as a trustee on the Grapevine Colleyville Independent School District board in a suburb of Dallas, these national cultural issues played a major role in prompting her to run for school board.

Nakamura, who had served for six years on the Colleyville City Council, said she was concerned about educators, such as former Colleyville Heritage High School principal, James Whitfield, who she and other conservatives accused of being an activist for critical race theory and indoctrinating students. Whitfield, who was the school's first Black principal in a predominantly white school, has vehemently denied these claims.

"Ninety-nine percent of our teachers are absolutely wonderful," Nakamura said. "But it's the 1% that are starting to push [CRT] into our schools. And if we don't stop it now, within five to 10 years, they will have taken over our schools. We need to get back to the basics."

Whitfield, who holds a doctoral degree in education, was forced out of his job last year because of a letter he had written in the summer of 2020 in response to the killings of George Floyd in Minnesota, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, in which he acknowledged that systemic racism is "alive and well" and called on community members to "commit to being an anti-racist."

Initially, the response to the letter had been positive, Whitfield told NPR's This American Life, but in July 2021 a backlash began when a former candidate for school board publicly accused Whitfield of promoting critical race theory and demanded the board fire him.

Students protest against a proposed ban on critical race theory at a school board meeting in Placentia, California. Critical race theory, or CRT, has become a catchall for any discussions around race.

Students rallied to defend Whitfield, but as the controversy took hold, the board voted unanimously in November not to renew his contract. In a settlement with the district, Whitfield is now on administrative leave and will continue to be paid by the district through August 2023.

In May, Whitfield testified before the US House subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in a hearing looking at political attacks on free speech and classroom censorship. In his testimony, he said that the attacks on educators, who have faced online bullying, death threats and hate mail, have been a coordinated effort by political groups on the right "who are determined to destroy public education."

"I've witnessed firsthand what an environment can become when the most extreme, vile, hate-filled elements take grip of a community," Whitfield said.

Nakamura said she and other conservatives are not out to vilify educators, but rather are supporting parents' right to have a say in what's being taught in the classroom.

"School districts are known to hide things from parents, and they shouldn't," she said. "Parents need to have involvement. And when you push the parents out, they're not going to stand for that."

She said this message has resonated with voters in Tarrant County, Texas, where last month she and fellow conservative candidates won 10 school board seats across four school districts.

Republican governors in states such as Florida and Texas have also pushed these culture issues in schools. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who in March signed the so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill into law that forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade,last summer said during an appearance on Fox News Channel that he would get the "political apparatus involved so we can make sure there's not a single school board member who supports critical race theory."

Almost overnight, groups like Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education have sprung up and began working to harness parents' and community members' frustration.

More established conservative groups have also ramped up their efforts. The Leadership Institute, founded in 1979, launched an online training series in September for conservative school board candidates.

"Parents saw what was on their students' laptops and what was happening in virtual classrooms during the pandemic, and they were not happy," said Stephen Rowe, director of digital training at the Leadership Institute. "The closer they looked, the more they wanted to get involved."

"I worry that trust will erode, especially as schools are faced with some really big challenges that have nothing to do with the national political and cultural issues in many of these races."

Rebecca Jacobsen, professor, Michigan State University

Progressives say Democrats in the past have not focused enough attention on local elections, like school boards, which they say has left many communities vulnerable to more extreme candidates on the right. But they're starting to fight back with their own activism, with groups such as Run for Something, which actively recruits and supports candidates on the left to counter some of these efforts.

"The far right has been investing tons of outside money in these races," said Amanda Litman, co-founder and executive director of Run for Something. "And the Democrats haven't really had a good infrastructure in place to support candidates in these local, mostly nonpartisan races."

But Litman said that's where her group and others are trying to push back. Her group, founded in 2017 in the wake of President Donald Trump's presidential victory, has been prioritizing local elections, including school boards.

"Longer term, the strategy is to build a bench of young leaders to run for offices," Litman said. She said school board seats are often seen as a stepping stone for higher political office, but she said first-time candidates often struggle.

"The system isn't built to make it easy to get involved," she said.

This isn't the first time that national politics and the culture wars have infiltrated school board politics. These clashes have been popping up for decades, starting almost 100 years ago with the "Scopes monkey trial" over the teaching of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in schools.

Through the decades of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, fights over civil rights and school integration have also played out in heated debates at school boards across the country. In the late 1980s and 1990s, issues over the teaching of sex education erupted in schools. In more recent years, we've seen the education wars driven by President George W. Bush's No Child Behind legislation and President Barack Obama's Race to the Top, which have pitted teacher unions against school reformers. Clashes over charter schools and Common Core standards have also attracted attention and money from outside groups.

But Michigan State University's Jacobsen said that for all the money and attention the "education wars" produced, the attention given to these new fights largely driven by the swift dissemination of information via social media has produced a shockingly similar message that has spread across the country very quickly.

"Before the internet and social media, these ideas were shared at a much slower pace," she said. "Today, the same messaging is seen all over the country all at once."

It's a phenomenon that Denise Blaya Powell, co-founder of the progressive group Women Who Run Nebraska, has also noticed. A key narrative in several Nebraska school board races centers on a March 2021 proposal from the Nebraska State Board of Education that would have established statewide K-12 health education standards. The proposal, which was paused indefinitely in September 2021 after opposition from conservative Republicans like Gov. Pete Ricketts, included teaching all students about gender identity and stereotypes. High school students would have also learned about homophobia, transphobia and sexual assault.

The outrage and messaging around the standards has made its way into local school board elections throughout the state with advertisements using similar language to suggest that progressive candidates support kindergarten and first-grade students discussing genitalia in the classroom.

"The opposition is well organized, and they have the messaging down pat," Blaya Powell said. "I've been on calls with organizations in other states, advocating for similar health standards and the opposition's messaging is identical to what we see in Nebraska," she said.

While many had hoped the 2021-22 school year would be a return to normalcy for students and teachers, the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated many stressorson the K-12 education system that had plagued schools for decades. As students returned to classes in-person, schools were faced with extreme staffing shortages that left many teachers covering extra classes during their planning periods. Other staffing shortages led administrators and teachers to take on custodial roles and be on hand for cafeteria duty. National Guard troops were even called in by governors in some states like New Mexico and Massachusetts to pitch in to drive school buses.

"The issues that school communities really need to be focusing on right now isn't happening," said Jon Valant, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. "The issues riling people up -- CRT, sex education, book bans -- are tangential to the real problems facing schools."

Plans to accelerate learning in the 2021-22 school year to help students catch up from a year and a half of lost learning was put on hold as the virus spread, resulting in high rates of student and teacher absences. Just when unity is needed to tackle the most pressing issues, communities are divided, he added.

"What's happening across the country in all these school board races is really a distraction from the real issues affecting schools," Valant said. "What I worry about is the longer-term effects it will have on school boards and who will run and win seats in these races."

At a minimum, Valant said voting is the most important thing community members can do if they're concerned about what is happening in their schools.

"If people just voted, that would address a good part of the vulnerability we see in these elections," he said. "These races are often decided by very few votes, so the more people engaged in thoughtful and good conscience discourse offers a real chance of changing outcomes and policies at the school board level."

Voting is critically important given that voter turnout is "discouragingly low," with rates of just 5% to 10% of the electorate, according to the National School Boards Association. Turnout tends to be especially low in areas with "off-cycle" school board elections that are held on different days from state and national elections or even different times of year. Information about candidates in these races are also often hard to come by.

The result is that school board elections are susceptible to the whims of a small number of voters, Valant warned.

Reforms and changes to how and when local elections are run, such as moving school board elections to coincide with other state and national elections, could help guard against small groups from taking over local school boards. But Valant said the best thing you can do as an individual is to be informed and get involved. That means voting in school board elections, attending meetings and even running as a candidate yourself.

"If you're concerned with what you're seeing in your community, think about running for office yourself and rallying support among people in the community whose ideas are aligned with yours," he said.

Even though Folkemer lost his race for school board, he said he doesn't regret putting himself or his family in the spotlight of local politics, even as his candidacy invited personal attacks against him on social media and in the press.

"It's sad that people on the side of the opposition spewed the vitriol and hate that they did towards me," he said. "I know it was difficult on our family to see and hear it all, but it was a wonderful teaching moment for our children to see why it's important to speak up for those who are being hurt and marginalized, even if it means we attract the same angry voices towards ourselves."

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School Boards Are Becoming the Fiercest Battlefront for the Culture Wars - CNET

The bones of the new Netflix series Snowflake Mountain are as old as time. Its a reality show about adversity, where a gang of ill-equipped people are dragged out into the wilderness and forced to fend for themselves. Its SAS: Who Dares Wins. Its Im a Celebrity. Its The Island with Bear Grylls, or Eden, or Naked and Afraid, or quite possibly that terrible-sounding new Squid Game competition. Youve seen versions of it before, and you will continue to see versions of it until the end of time.

So how does Snowflake Mountain attempt to differentiate itself from the pack? Well, this is 2022 so, with an inevitability thudding enough to pulverise your bones, it has chosen to hurl itself two-footed into the culture wars.

Its called Snowflake Mountain, for crying out loud. This is where we are as a civilisation now. A series about pampered and over-emotional young people some of whom have the temerity to take selfies, or live with their parents, or own laptops being dragged out into the middle of nowhere seemingly against their will, and all for the benefit of a paying audience tacitly egged on to scream NOT SO WOKE NOW, ARE YOU? at their screens whenever one of them reacts badly to their surroundings. In terms of utter dystopia, it isnt quite The Running Man, but it isnt all that far off either.

As with most shows of this ilk, the bulk of the heavy lifting is done in the first couple of episodes. Thats where we meet the contestants at their most insufferable. Some are would-be influencers, others are would-be party girls. One in particular is introduced with a clip of his mother literally placing a golden crown on his head. As they come to realise what the show asks of them, the contestants universally begin to whine, and this whining grows in volume and intensity until the moment where and this is a real part of the show all their suitcases get gratuitously exploded in front of them.

This sequence is Snowflake Mountain in microcosm. The exploders are Joel Graves and Matt Tate, two men who spent some time in the military and now scream things like Mother nature is the queen of tough love! at anyone who doesnt happen to share their calloused, thousand-yard-stare worldviews. As the ostensible mentors in the show, its their job to force the contestants through extended bouts of suffering, while constantly reminding them that its all for their own good.

Of course, none of it is real. As the series wears on, you quickly come to realise that neither the snowflakes nor the mentors are quite as two-dimensional as they seem. The contestants quickly adapt to their new situation, and the mentors become reliable shoulders to cry on. They climb a mountain together. They look after some chickens together. They have what basically amounts to group therapy sessions together, even. Its all very evolved. The problem is, this stuff is hidden behind an exhausting sheen of red state/blue state division.

Which raises the question: who, exactly, is Snowflake Mountain for? It isnt for wet-handed liberals, wholl understandably find themselves being riled up by the way the show caricatures and patronises Gen Z. And it isnt for the conservative Fox News chuckleheads either, because theyll invariably find themselves repulsed by the scenes where the contestants are encouraged to care for living things and explore their feelings. And it isnt for anyone else, because theyll just see the words Snowflake Mountain on a Netflix submenu and realise that their lives are too short to get involved with this sort of deliberately manipulative dreck.

And this is a shame. Because, had it been treated with even a modicum less kneejerk, kids-these-days, God-help-us-if-theres-a-war grouchiness, Snowflake Mountain would be far more enjoyable to watch. The kids on the show wouldnt have been boiled down to their worst characteristics, the mentors wouldnt have had to present themselves with so much insincere intolerance, and we would have got a show whose primary goal wasnt to simply earn a day and a half of outraged engagement from the worst percentile on Twitter.

But here we are. And if the Netflix algorithm declares Snowflake Mountain to be a hit, were going to have even more rubbish like this shoved down our throats forever. If you tolerate Snowflake Mountain, Libtard Island will be next.

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Snowflake Mountain: Netflix reality show braves the culture wars - The Guardian