Modern Romance: An Investigation
Written by Aziz Ansari in 2015
The Raccoon: Comedian Aziz Ansari describes the results of his extensive research project about technology's influence on dating in the past decade.
UNMASKED: Writing a book as a stand-up comedian is an incredibly difficult undertaking. There is so much pressure to be funny, regardless of the subject matter. With this in mind, it’s no wonder that there a lot of jokes in Modern Romance. Some of them made me laugh as much as Ansari’s routines have, such as an aside that “How do we figure out when to call, when to text, and when to just drop everything, stand outside someone’s window, and serenade them with your favorite nineties R&B tune, perhaps ‘All My Life’ by K-Ci & JoJo?”; others completely backfired, such as a repetitive tangent on a senior citizen who was obsessed with donuts.
What makes Ansari a comedic genius, and what translates much better into this book than the intentional jokes, is how he relates to people. Ansari is known for calling people up on stage to discuss their lives during his performances. While any other research book would simply say something along the lines of, “John, a firefighter, said that the economy was affecting his job,” when referencing a person interviewed, Ansari gave me a glimpse into the mindset of many of the people he consulted, often showing the next few lines of the conversation after someone responded to his question.
Ansari makes an effort to communicate with the reader as well. He began the book with an embarrassing example from his own dating life, and he humorously recounted some of the awkward situations he encountered when hosting focus groups in Tokyo and Buenos Aires.
This casual tone helped me to comfortably navigate the cornucopia of insightful information and detailed advice that Modern Romance offers, which, written in any other way, likely would have been overwhelming. In his introduction, Ansari acknowledges the many scientists who helped him compile the content, and the book reflects just how much time and energy went into it. Although written by a comedian, Modern Romance is a book that anyone struggling to connect with other people in today’s phone-obsessed culture will benefit from and enjoy reading.
Strong Points:
- The book shows how society has changed over time and includes graphs and personal stories from the past several decades.
- Ansari acknowledges that there were areas he had to leave out, and yet there is an incredibly wide range of information given.
Weak Points:
- Certain tangents and jokes feel forced and are a boring distraction from the rest of the book. It almost seems as if there is a joke quota Ansari’s publisher required.
Rating: 18/20 Tinder matches
Ideal Setting: Read this before going on a first date so you can realize just how absurd American dating culture has become. Or before travelling to France, Japan, and Argentina, to be terrified for very different reasons.
really agree on the forced jokes thing! compared to the kinda downcast and darkly funny episodes of "master of none" that he wrote, there seems to be an imposed need for humor in this which doesnt help things
ReplyDeleteI've watched his "Master of None" on Netflix, and to me, it felt like the sort of thing a person would usually do, as opposed to things that one would never do, like run a frozen banana stand. This sounds like something that would be interesting to me, because dating today really is absurd. You're supposed to act better than you really are if you want to get someone nice, only to find out that they have their own secrets as well. This sounds like a book I might want to read.
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