I've written a lot lately about "90 Day Fiance". And that's actually a good thing because it means the demons have been exorcised and what's swirling around in my brain is all mindless, minor stuff. It's nice to be in such a place. But this may very well be my last 90 post. I think I'm done with the show. It's been on for six seasons now and I've watched them all, except for season two (I don't remember why). As the show has gone on, I've been uncomfortable with how certain things have been handled. I know "reality" is not really a thing on these shows, there's always manipulation behind the scenes. But it's become more of a competition between cast members to get onto other incarnations of the show, than a chronicle of people from different countries in love. Season one was the most organic and most of those couples had spent more than a day together before applying for their K-1 visa. The point of the visa is that you already know you want to marry this person. But the more recent couples have spent very little time together and frequently complain that 90 days isn't enough time to know if you wanna get married. And no, it's not. That's not what you're supposed to do, use the 90 days as an audition. It gets tiring to hear them constantly talk about not being ready for the marriage. There's also the fact that at least two guys in the past two seasons have been borderline pedophiles. One was 26 and married an 18-year-old who he had been "talking" to since she was 16 or 17. Someone this season had been making regular trips to visit a 16-year-old in Mexico, who he married when she was 19 (he was in his mid-30's and they have since split). Obviously, the producers know the ages prior to casting and I think it's irresponsible to be glorifying this type of thing. These girls were underage and groomed by older men prior to marrying. But the main reason I think I'm done has to do with recent events that made national news.
Larissa and Colt were, admittedly, one of the main reasons I wanted to see season six. In the previews, I had trouble figuring out if Colt was a man or a woman because we didn't yet have names and he has a lot of womanly curves (seriously, I've never seen a man shaped like he is). Once the show premiered, it was revealed he lived in Las Vegas and was bringing a woman from Brazil to the U.S.. When Larissa landed at the airport, Colt did not greet her with flowers and she let it be known that was a misstep. Then, on the ride to the home he shares with his mother, Larissa learned there was no air conditioning in his car and no plans to fix the broken AC. Larissa would later go on to ask for a new couch, peruse new cars and shop for a wedding dress, getting denied funds by Colt (or his mother, who he shares a joint bank account with) at every turn. She was harassed by Colt's cousin without provocation. Even when Colt proposed, it was not a happy moment because he took a deathly afraid of heights Larissa to the highest point in Vegas. Even though she was visibly uncomfortable, he ignored it, sipped his drink and then proposed anyway. After much back and forth about whether they would marry, they got hitched in a wedding that saw her sporting a dress from Goodwill and guests wearing board shorts and flip flops. Not exactly living the dream.
Colt and Larissa had arguments and scraps before the wedding even happened and it was apparent his mother did not want this whole thing to happen. He's her only son and his father had passed away a decade before and it seems Mother Colt has placed him into her late husband's role in some ways. She was visibly jealous of the attention her 30-something son gave his fiancee. Larissa, who had not gotten anything she'd asked Colt for since her arrival, wanted to move into a place of their own and extricate her husband from his mother's bosom. But Colt wanted none of that. I never cared for anybody in this equation. Colt comes off as a manipulative, co-dependent Mama's boy who thought he was ordering a living, breathing sex doll from Brazil, rather than a wife. Larissa made mention that his only way of showing affection was sex and he thought they should have it frequently and whenever he asked. I didn't care for Larissa because she was a bit high strung and when it came out that she left behind two children in Brazil, her defense was that her ex was a bi-sexual crossdresser who she just couldn't deal with. Mother Colt seemed low key vindictive, never outright starting shit but certainly not shy to get involved once it was going down. They were all just kinda garbage people. And then came news that Larissa had been arrested shortly before the wedding, after posting a series of things on her social media about Colt stealing her phone and asking her followers to call 911. Allegedly, she assaulted Colt and that's why she was taken in. Her next social media post showed her playfully posing against a cop car and the pair appeared to move on from the incident. But appearances are rarely what they seem on social media, aren't they? Last week, Larissa posted videos and photos of Colt baiting her into a fight, followed by pictures of her with facial injuries she claimed Colt inflicted. Colt posted his own photo of a busted lip he said she inflicted. Police were called, people were patched up and Larissa was taken in after the cops supposedly determined Colt couldn't have left the marks on her because he bites his nails and thus has no nails to scratch with. That seems flimsy, but okay. Currently, Larissa is awaiting a February court date and Colt is awaiting her response to his divorce petition. What happens with her visa remains to be seen.
The pattern of abuse here is clear as day; they fight, they make-up and everything's hunky dory, they fight again and cops are called. I genuinely hope they go through with the divorce because I think they may legit kill each other if they remain together. This is how it begins. And what really sticks in my craw about all this is that it's not the first case of abuse TLC has aired. To be fair, no physical altercations between Colt and Larissa have been aired. But a few seasons ago, there was a case where the female half of a couple shoved her fiance on a number of occasions, on camera, and TLC did nothing about it. Another woman literally beat her husband, taking swings at him with open and closed fists, on at least two occasions and TLC just kept filming. You know if this had been men hitting or shoving women, something would have been done. I don't know why that double standard still exists. There have been other incidents of violence, most of them much less violent than the Larissa and Colt saga, described by cast members as having happened off-camera. I started watching this show to see the cultural difference (which, as it turns out, I didn't need to do because I get to live it now with the Mrs.). And yeah, I stayed to watch some of the trainwrecks. But it's gotten out of hand now. It's not, "haha, these people are making stupid decisions" anymore. It's violence and children being preyed on and children being cast aside by their parents. There's enough of that in real life. I don't need to tune in to watch it every Sunday. All that said, there is supposedly a version of the show being filmed where the American partner moves overseas and that's intriguing. I'll probably wait until it all hears and get feedback about whether it's as bad as current 90 Day or closer to the better seasons of the show before I watch. I've wasted enough of my time watching this last, horrible season.
Sunday, January 13, 2019
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Land of Illusion
I did not watch the Idiot's speech earlier this week, but saw the cliffnotes after the fact. I perused Twitter to see reactions and was...not surprised, but dismayed. There were plenty of people calling a spade a spade and pointing out his lies, that the speech was a televised tantrum and accomplished nothing. But for every one of those posts, there were two or three congratulating the Idiot on a great speech and hashtagging that we should build the wall. These same people responded to the sane ones with their delusions about how much danger lurks at the border and how many people are dying. None of these Idiot supporters cared when children were put in cages and died there. None of them really seems to care about the government shutdown. It's tunnel vision over the wall. And it's really becoming apparent just how racist and stupid some people in this country are.
I said shortly after the election that I was giving some leeway to people who had voted for the Idiot, but were upset that he won. I still believed these people were dumb; "I didn't think he would win/I just didn't wanna vote for her" aren't exactly great excuses and illustrate the way voters don't take their votes seriously. But if you realized your mistake now that the world was being penciled in to end, I got that. However, after only a few months of his shenanigans and racist/sexist/anti-anybody-who-isn't-white rhetoric, I changed my opinion. Anyone who still supported him after that was as bad as he is. They were as racist as he is. I don't care if you have family or friends who are people of color and think you aren't racist because of that. How do you have those people in your life, who you clearly deem to be worthy of love and friendship, yet support somebody who thinks they are less than human? I've never been able to reconcile how these people do that. And less than a year into this circus of an administration, I hit my limit. I unfriended people who defended him, or themselves for defending him. I had nothing left for that negativity and stupidity. All of that was bad enough. But now we've come to the point of a blatant, outright lie, that the sane among us knew was a lie all along, of The Wall. This fucker has shut down the government, left families without basic living expenses, over something that is not needed and would not do a damn thing to stop illegal immigration. He has been offered chances to get security money, sans wall, and reopen the government. Any decent president makes deals in this situation, they don't throw temper tantrums. The problem is he has nothing to offer the other side. He's been told opening the government won't get him a wall, keeping it shut down won't get him a wall, yet he chooses to continue the shutdown. And it all goes back to his hateful promise that he would get Mexico to fund a wall. That's what got him elected by similar small-minded sheep who didn't do their research and blindly believed his BS. And he apparently believes if it's not in the process of being built by 2020, he won't get re-elected.
This is not how adults function. Adults do not sit in their office and refuse to move until they get what they want. Adults don't plug their ears to block out their opponents point of view. The Idiot is not an adult. He's a child doing a very poor job of masquerading as a president. Actual children can be reasoned with, he cannot. Hell, if we even survive the next two years, it will be a miracle. The Idiot has always been out for only one person - himself. He wants what he wants and surrounded himself with yes people his entire life. The problem is that's not how the government works. It is not a system that revolves around him, and that's why it's been such a problem for him. And clearly what's a problem for our country, besides him, is racism. Undercover racists love to say that racism can't exist anymore because of Obama or because of civil rights (which the Idiot also wants to roll back, btw), but we know that's not true. Every four years we hear about the family life, the past, the religion, the qualifications of presidential candidates. People were desperate to dig something up on Obama so he could not run for office. What did we hear about the Idiot? He's a misogynist who likely sexually assaulted women, he has no religion, he has no qualifications, he dodged military service and has been married multiple times. He refuses to give up tax returns, likely because they'll show he's not as rich or business minded as he claims to be. Obama walked through fire, released everything required and then some during his election campaign. People with nothing to hide, who aren't snake oil salesmen, hide nothing. This spiteful, stupid Idiot suckered a lot of stupid people and we're all paying for it. And it really is cult-like, the way his followers defend every single move as if it's right. I didn't always agree with Obama, who I voted for both times, and I didn't strike out on the interwebs to defend his every action just because he was our first minority president. Yet Idiot supporters seem to go all in defending his lies just because he's as racist and hateful as they are.
There's a woman on "90 Day Fiance" from Indonesia with a shady ass past. She's unpleasant, reluctant mother of a young son who expects her American husband to ditch his own family and solely focus on raising her kid. Because he's an Idiot, he's doing just that. She claims to be a doctor, lawyer, beauty queen, mess of other professions. She posts on her social media photos of her holding up random products, as if she's an ambassador for the brand. In reality, none of these brands are paying her, she's just trying to bait them into "discovering" her so she can have her 15 minutes and, maybe, some free stuff. She posts about her "charity" organization that needs money to, "help people who need help". She uses Jewish last names because she believes they sound moneyed. She posts boudoir photos for all to see and claims her body is great and people are jealous of her life (and 2 points for body positivity here, I guess). She has Idiot syndrome. She lives in a land of illusion, the exact same way he does. And she gets far more hate than he does and all she's doing is trying for fame on a reality tv show. He's running the fucking country. They both think if they say something enough times, people will believe them and take it as gospel. How is it people accept that from a sex offender, but go all in on derailing the lies of a TV contestant? Ass backward thinking. And it has been an ass backward, long two years.
I said shortly after the election that I was giving some leeway to people who had voted for the Idiot, but were upset that he won. I still believed these people were dumb; "I didn't think he would win/I just didn't wanna vote for her" aren't exactly great excuses and illustrate the way voters don't take their votes seriously. But if you realized your mistake now that the world was being penciled in to end, I got that. However, after only a few months of his shenanigans and racist/sexist/anti-anybody-who-isn't-white rhetoric, I changed my opinion. Anyone who still supported him after that was as bad as he is. They were as racist as he is. I don't care if you have family or friends who are people of color and think you aren't racist because of that. How do you have those people in your life, who you clearly deem to be worthy of love and friendship, yet support somebody who thinks they are less than human? I've never been able to reconcile how these people do that. And less than a year into this circus of an administration, I hit my limit. I unfriended people who defended him, or themselves for defending him. I had nothing left for that negativity and stupidity. All of that was bad enough. But now we've come to the point of a blatant, outright lie, that the sane among us knew was a lie all along, of The Wall. This fucker has shut down the government, left families without basic living expenses, over something that is not needed and would not do a damn thing to stop illegal immigration. He has been offered chances to get security money, sans wall, and reopen the government. Any decent president makes deals in this situation, they don't throw temper tantrums. The problem is he has nothing to offer the other side. He's been told opening the government won't get him a wall, keeping it shut down won't get him a wall, yet he chooses to continue the shutdown. And it all goes back to his hateful promise that he would get Mexico to fund a wall. That's what got him elected by similar small-minded sheep who didn't do their research and blindly believed his BS. And he apparently believes if it's not in the process of being built by 2020, he won't get re-elected.
This is not how adults function. Adults do not sit in their office and refuse to move until they get what they want. Adults don't plug their ears to block out their opponents point of view. The Idiot is not an adult. He's a child doing a very poor job of masquerading as a president. Actual children can be reasoned with, he cannot. Hell, if we even survive the next two years, it will be a miracle. The Idiot has always been out for only one person - himself. He wants what he wants and surrounded himself with yes people his entire life. The problem is that's not how the government works. It is not a system that revolves around him, and that's why it's been such a problem for him. And clearly what's a problem for our country, besides him, is racism. Undercover racists love to say that racism can't exist anymore because of Obama or because of civil rights (which the Idiot also wants to roll back, btw), but we know that's not true. Every four years we hear about the family life, the past, the religion, the qualifications of presidential candidates. People were desperate to dig something up on Obama so he could not run for office. What did we hear about the Idiot? He's a misogynist who likely sexually assaulted women, he has no religion, he has no qualifications, he dodged military service and has been married multiple times. He refuses to give up tax returns, likely because they'll show he's not as rich or business minded as he claims to be. Obama walked through fire, released everything required and then some during his election campaign. People with nothing to hide, who aren't snake oil salesmen, hide nothing. This spiteful, stupid Idiot suckered a lot of stupid people and we're all paying for it. And it really is cult-like, the way his followers defend every single move as if it's right. I didn't always agree with Obama, who I voted for both times, and I didn't strike out on the interwebs to defend his every action just because he was our first minority president. Yet Idiot supporters seem to go all in defending his lies just because he's as racist and hateful as they are.
There's a woman on "90 Day Fiance" from Indonesia with a shady ass past. She's unpleasant, reluctant mother of a young son who expects her American husband to ditch his own family and solely focus on raising her kid. Because he's an Idiot, he's doing just that. She claims to be a doctor, lawyer, beauty queen, mess of other professions. She posts on her social media photos of her holding up random products, as if she's an ambassador for the brand. In reality, none of these brands are paying her, she's just trying to bait them into "discovering" her so she can have her 15 minutes and, maybe, some free stuff. She posts about her "charity" organization that needs money to, "help people who need help". She uses Jewish last names because she believes they sound moneyed. She posts boudoir photos for all to see and claims her body is great and people are jealous of her life (and 2 points for body positivity here, I guess). She has Idiot syndrome. She lives in a land of illusion, the exact same way he does. And she gets far more hate than he does and all she's doing is trying for fame on a reality tv show. He's running the fucking country. They both think if they say something enough times, people will believe them and take it as gospel. How is it people accept that from a sex offender, but go all in on derailing the lies of a TV contestant? Ass backward thinking. And it has been an ass backward, long two years.
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