Aziz Ansari Thinks Technology Is Probably Ruining Your Love Life
Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Wednesday, June 17 2015 @ 06:28 am
Last modified on
Aziz Ansari already has a reputation as an actor, stand-up comic, and fashionable gentleman. Now, as author of a new book called Modern Romance, he's looking to add “dating guru” to that list.
The book is a humorous collection of essays and observations that chronicle the challenges of looking for love in the age of Tinder. Ansari is no stranger to the subject. He's talked extensively in his stand-up about the ways technology — smartphones, texting, social media, online dating, and more — affects today’s dating landscape. But this time, he's coming at it from a different angle.
Modern Romance was written with sociologist Eric Klinenberg, who provides a welcome dose of serious insight to balance Ansari's humor. Together they conducted a research project that took over a year to complete and involved hundreds of interviews.
“We talked to old people, married people, young people, single people, everybody,” Ansari tweeted[*1] . “We also enlisted some of the best social scientists to help us understand and study all the facets of modern love and romance.”
The results are both funny and fascinating. Texting, in particular, was a popular subject. Modern Romance highlights several bad texting habits plaguing 21st century daters:
- Ambiguity. Are you “hanging out” or going on a date? “The lack of clarity over whether the meet-up is even an actual date frustrates both sexes to no end,” Ansari writes. “Since it’s usually the guys initiating,” he adds, “this is a clear area where men can step it up.” Guys, time to step it up and get straightforward.
- Endless nonsense. “I can’t tell you how many girls I met who were clearly interested in a guy who, instead of asking them out, just kept sucking them into more mundane banter,” writes Ansari. Let that be a lesson to you: skip the boring back-and-forths about laundry and grocery shopping. Get to the good stuff: are you meeting up, when, and where?
- “Hey.”If that's all you have to say in a text message, it's better left unsent. Especially if it has multiple Ys. Although Ansari admits to sending plenty of his own “hey” texts, he cautions that “generic messages come off as super dull and lazy” and “make the recipient feel like she’s not very special or important to you.”
Thankfully, it's not all bad. “We also found some really good texts that gave me hope for the modern man,” Ansari says. A good text, he explains, involves any or all of these:
- An invitation to something specific at a specific time
- A callback to a previous interaction with the person
- A humorous tone
Pre-order a copy of the book here[*2] and start channeling your inner Aziz.