I keep forgetting there was no new episode of 90 Day Fiance on Sunday night (do they really think that anyone who watches that show cares about football?), which means I’m not going to be able to partake in my weekly de-stress routine of watching the latest episode and letting it smooth my brain like waves to rocks.
Friends keep telling me to watch all the latest streaming shows—Bridgerton, the new season of Search Party, whatever murder docu-series Netflix churned out that week—and wonder what’s taking me so long to catch up, and it’s because all I want to do is watch shows in the ever-expanding 90 Day Fiance Universe (during this pandemic I’ve watched/am watching various seasons of 90 Day Fiance, 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days, and 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way, plus all those miserable Tell All specials).
I think I originally got hooked on the show for the reason why a lot of people watch reality TV: it’s fun to watch un-self-aware people make horrible decisions (and also, the international aspect of the show is genuinely interesting). But as I watch more of the show, that schadenfreude I initially experienced while following the subjects’ far-fetch quests for love (or for opportunistic green card marriages) has been replaced by something else—painful recognition. Sure, I can’t relate to a 50-something divorcee trying to get a visa for her 20-something Belizean boyfriend who is most definitely pawning off all the expensive gifts she gives him, or to one of the many weird white dudes getting strung along by Ukrainian Instagram models. But I do relate to being excited about someone flying to visit you and then experiencing the disappointment of a sweaty man with a rolling suitcase standing there, or meeting someone from online dating for the first time and seeing they don’t look as good as they do in their photos—and remembering that you probably don’t, either.
I am absolutely reading way too into this show, but I do feel like it touches on the way the fantasies we’ve projected onto the people we date bump up against reality. I’ve always struggled with this—I tend to build up an idealized version of someone based on photos, lists of interests, some random thing we have in common that I’ve decided means we’re meant to be, and other shallow details. Even when it becomes very clear that the person standing in front of me isn’t the person I built up in my head, I round them up to that idealized version until it’s no longer tenable. “Stay in the present” has become as overused as “just breathe” when it comes to new agey life tricks, but I think if I was able to do this I would have avoided a lot of bad dating experiences (but then again, if I avoided those bad experiences I wouldn’t have this wisdom to extol on my dumb little newsletter).
I think we string ourselves along on these fantasies because reality is disappointing and that sucks. It’s really annoying to think you’ve found someone great on paper only to find out that it’s not a fit and you have to go back to the drawing board on the embarrassing quest to find love and connection. It all feels like a big waste of time. BUT, I do think had I allowed myself to be present in my failed relationships, I would have been able to enjoy the fun times while they were happening and not lumped them in with the ultimately bad experience of that relationship. I could have enjoyed dueting on “Teenage Dream” at 6 a.m. at Kajun’s before I found out [redacted] was selfish and opportunistic. I would have savored spending my 4th of July with [redacted] before he stopped speaking to me. I would have enjoyed all those sweet moments of admitting I like someone and then hearing that they like me back. The list goes on!
Fantasy brushing up against reality isn’t all bad. It’s actually kind of transcendent to experience someone seeing all of your mundane flaws and then loving you anyway, and vice versa. For example, I believe all of my best friends are talented, gorgeous, and hilarious even though I’m eminently aware of their flaws and they mine—despite experiencing each other as deeply imperfect, we believe each other to be perfect.
But back to 90 Day Fiance: in one episode, 49-year-old Rebecca is traveling to meet her 27-year-old Tunisian boyfriend, Zied, in person for the first time. In the course of their relationship, Zied experienced a filtered version of Rebecca—selfies softened with Instagram filters, their video chats filmed at good angles and with a Ring light—and she’s worried about what he’ll think he sees her in person. Finally, Zied appears in the airport crowd, heavier and older looking in person, and beholds Rebecca, who looks the same. But Zied is wearing a T-shirt brandished with the Facetuned version of Rebecca, which stands in contrast with the real Rebecca standing beside him. It’s a weird moment—the disappointing real-life Zied is wearing a shirt with the perfect filtered Rebecca, standing next to the disappointing real-life Rebecca—but the couple ended up staying together. It could be just because Zied wants to move to the US that badly, but I like to believe it’s because love is an agreement with an another person that we’re imperfect but are going to pretend otherwise.
Unsolicited Recommendations
David Wallace-Wells, one of the most well-known climate alarmists (I’ve tried reading his book The Uninhabitable Earth but can’t get a few pages in without hyperventilating), actually has some … positive news about climate change? There’s still a lot of bad stuff: reaching 2 degrees Celsius means swaths of the planet will be unlivable, resulting in millions of climate refugees and deaths. But, the good news is that renewable energy is cheaper than ever, coal is quickly phasing out, some countries (not us!) are hitting climate targets faster than expected. Some things we need to be on the lookout for: a new wave of greenwashing (everything will be labeled “carbon neutral”), climate NIMBY-ism (“I don’t want to see a wind farm from my house!”), and overproduction of batteries for electric cars that will put a strain on the salt flats where lithium is mined.
I love this very stupid Saw-themed Twitter account that just tweets out “quotes” from Jigsaw.
Here is UCLA gymnast Nia Dennis’ latest viral floor routine in case you missed it.
The podcast Reply All is doing a series on what went down over at Bon Appetit, and it’s very interesting so far. It’s really hard to grapple with the fact that so much of the online food culture I consume was shaped by Bon Appetit, and how so much of Bon Appetit’s culture was shaped by racism.
I finally watched Host, the horror movie shot on Zoom during the pandemic on the streaming service Shudder, and it’s SO good and VERY scary! And it’s not even an hour long so the scariness is well-sustained. The main takeaway is don’t do a seance a Zoom!
Here’s me trying to start exercising again while society crumbles around me: