February 25, 2024

🦚 A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #175🐲 You Gotta Cut It On The Bias, Babe

Why do I watch this cr4p?

Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice-of-life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.

Dear Internet,

Before we begin, this week’s issue went back and forth on several topics, one of which was my thoughts on the Netflix limited series One Day. I’ve read the book years ago (I read the book 14 years ago! Crazy!) as well as seeing the movie. I was hesitant to see the series BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS AT THE END. Thursday, I mainlined the rest of the series and did a silent ugly cry for what seemed forever. I crawled into bed and hugged Mr. Lisa and told him not to die (spoiler) while I cried into his t-shirt and he called me morbid and told me to go to sleep. Friday morning, I hugged him tight after my shower and told him the same thing and again he called me morbid while he hugged me tighter. This is love, baby!

Anyway, be prepared for a possible half-issue this week as right now I’m too emotionally raw from that fucking story to process in a coherent way.  (I’ve changed my mind. I want to read the book again so that issue will probably be in a few months.)

(I link to my review above as I read the book back in 2010. I want to read the book again before writing my review but thanks to the limited series, all eleven of my libraries have an ebook wait list of several months.)

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I’ve been signing up for free conferences related to my industry. This week was a conference on accessibility ranging from AI to apps and websites as well as discussions about accessibility policies and laws. Did you know that it is a law that your US based website must follow accessibility practices and if you don’t, you can get sued? There were nearly 5,000 lawsuits filed last year alone. Before you panic, it seems larger companies are the ones being sued with the National Federation of the Blind suing Target as one of the largest examples. If you want to check to see if your website is accessibility compliant, W3C (the org that sets the standards of the internet) has a list of companies that will scan your site and provide you a list of errors, most for free.

(I scanned rabey.net and I’m “semi-compliant.” Adding compliancy to a long list of things I need to do to the industry that is my websites!)

I have learned a lot during this conference. One thing that really stood out in the myriad of seminars I hung out in, only two presenters described themselves and their physical background at the beginning of their presentations. One of the requirements for accessibility for the blind is to describe images and video. Not everyone is perfect, it seems. There also didn’t seem like there was a lot of content on the hearing impaired. I noted both of these items in the after conference survey.

(If you have a website or newsletter and you’re using images or video in your content, please provide alt text to describe the image. The visually impaired will thank you. I occasionally forget to do this myself and I’m trying to be better.)

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An ongoing trend has been people, regardless of what or how, are offering Discord access as a perk. I now find myself on 25 Discords of which I barely read any of them. I counted my Slack instances and I’m up to 11. Slack, however, mostly seems dead in all those instances, except for Mint City Collective (Charlotte FC fan club). I’m a bit annoyed on an instance that I signed in, which was supposed to be lifetime access, and the owner said it was complete. Like, yes, granted I haven’t used the Slack group in forever, but why offer something if you’re not going to follow through?

Anyway, it is clear I’m overwhelmed by my Discords. Some were situational (like the accessibility conference but they did ask in the survey if they should keep it open) but others are super popular. There are a lot of relationships that are being built and I want in on those relationships.

Discord takes me back to IRC days where I met Mr. Lisa and ½ of my friend group. Getting to know people over shared interests formed a lot of strong bonds. I met Best Kate and Brendan through IRC and those two are some of my closest friends. And even better! We’ve all met in person! Back in the late ‘90s, meeting someone online and then venturing out into the “real world” was scary.

Story Time: With Mr. Lisa, I was second choice. We were friends for a year or so online before he came out to the Bay Area to hook up with another chick and stay with me. Per him, I was better, and the other chick was a wet blanket with a boyfriend who was trying to go poly. And here is Mr. Lisa and I over 20+ years later madly in deep love or at least deep like. (If I’m not ugly crying over his potential death.)

But the thing is, I need to find a new way to meet people online. Reddit surely isn’t it even though I suck down all the 90 Day Fiancé content I can find.

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In March I’m travelling to MI to see my brother, sister-in-law, and my nephew for a few days. Since I work from home, this does not put a dent in my daily routine. I lamented to my brother that I don’t want to be the aunt that is far away from my nephew but honestly? He may vaguely remember me (I haven’t seen him that often since he was born) and he may recall certain things about Mr. Lisa and I (like Thursday the pug), but I’m not sure if he will care if I’m there?

Regardless, I am excited to see everyone. I cannot remember the last time I saw my brother and fam. They came to see us at the cabin in September 2022 so I’m really hoping it hasn’t been that long.

A change of scenery will be nice especially with this false spring.

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Wonderful Thing

90 Day Fiancé

So, let’s talk about a show franchise that has so many different series that a new episode of something is on every week, 52 weeks a year.

Where to begin?

It started when Love Island UK finished for that current season and I wanted something trashy. 90 Day Fiancé was available on Hulu so I said why the fuck not? And here we are, at least five years later, and without fail, every week, I spend 60 – 90 minutes sucking up some poor schmuck’s lives. (Currently it’s around four hours since I’m watching four fucking 90DF shows.)

Quick recap: 90 Day Fiancé documents Americans with an international partners who want to move to the US. This is known as the K-1 visa. When the international partner arrives in the US, there is a 90 day countdown for the two to get married or the partner gets ejected back to their country.

In the first few seasons of the show, there wasn’t lots of drama as these couples negotiate the law and their now joined lives. Some are clearly scams on trying to get into the US by faking a love match. But overall, those seasons are tame.

Now? Now though?

Lord, have mercy on my sinning soul. It’s a huge fucking shit show.

Here are all the series in the 90 Day universe

• 90 Day Fiancé: Americans bring their international soon-to-be spouse to the US on the K-1 visa

• 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way Americans move to their international soon-to-be spouse’s country.

• 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days Americans meet their partner for the first time and determine if they will bring them to the States

• 90 Day Fiancé: The Single Life Documents single Americans (or ex-partners) from the franchise as they attempt to find love again

• 90 Day Fiancé Diaries Cast of the franchise tape updates on their life with their own equipment. The show is not filmed by production.

• 90 Day Fiancé: Pillow Talk Cast of the franchise run commentary on that week’s episode

• 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? Documents the daily lives of couples who got married

• 90 Day Fiancé UK Brits bring their international soon-to-be spouse to the UK on the spousal visa

Here’s the ick part: This is not the whole 90DF universe! This is just the shows that I watch!

Right now, I’ve got four 90DF shows I’m watching weekly: 90DF OG (with Erika), 90DF: The Single Life, 90DF UK (with Erika), and 90DF Diaries.

I am a sick, sick woman.

What’s even better? Mr. Lisa watches with me (or us with the case of Erika) depending on the couples in that series.

And for the good goss, there is always r/90DayFiance, r/90DayFianceUncensored, and r/90DayFianceUK. I’m obsessive about reading those subreddits every day and even Mr. Lisa reads them. It was in one of those subs he found the 90DF background he has on his tablet. I’m not that bad. And yep, I listen to Reality Gays for even more dirt and reactions.

(And oh god, we’re also watching Naked Attraction and Couple to Thruple. We’ve got trashy love bad. Don’t yuck our yum.)

It’s bad.

So, why do I watch? Because I’m a horrible person who lives off of schadenfreude and the universe is insanely quotable:

• “If I sleep with him, it means I consider him as the father of my kids.”

• “Who is against the queen will die!”

• “Don’t terrorize me with your pregnancy.”

• “You’re blaming an owl with a candle on the fact that you are an asshole to my kids?”

• “Things are about to get a lot more stupider.”

Thank god I’m already a US citizen,

lisa x

(Fuck fascists and Nazis!)

You've just finished reading A Most Unreliable Narrator: the slice of life newsletter from the GenXer about town, Lisa Rabey. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky if you're so inclined. I am everywhere. Copyright © 1996 - 2025 by Lisa Rabey