If there were ever a book that explains millennial dating habits, antics and romantic ideas, Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance hits the nail on the head.
Ansari writes all about the menaces, triumphs and misery of dating in the modern world through funny quips, anecdotes and even some personal stories.
Dating in the digital age is hard, and Ansari paints a beautiful, uncovered painting of how bonkers dating truly has become.
It made me blush at some points, knowing that I had done some of the things he had mentioned in the book.
Tim Smith / Photo Editor
Ansari is well-known for his role in the NBC show, Parks and Recreation as Tom Haverford, and that type of humor comes into play in his book.
There are several memorable quotes from this book that epitomize dating and relationships in the modern era.
He often refers back to how his parents once lived and how they fell in love and the idea of a much simpler time.
He emphasizes certain key factors in the day of modern dating.
For example, “Unlike phone calls, which bind two people in real-time conversations that require at least some shared interpretation of the situation, communication by text has no predetermined temporal sequencing and lots of room for ambiguity.”
What was particularly great about this book was the fact that he teamed up with a sociologist and actually did research on how technology, apps and the use of the internet has changed dating in the modern world.
He does not try to sugarcoat the aspect of modern dating and expresses the silliness of the fact that human interactions face-to-face are not what they used to be.
This book is all about how easy it is to get to know someone in the digital age, and the truthfulness behind it is pretty precise.
But, one critique I have on this otherwise well-written memoir, is that he doesn’t really offer any solutions to the problem.
Sure, it is all about how things have evolved and less about how we go back to the way our parents met back in the olden days, but I think that many people have begun to get fed up with the digital age and how difficult it can be for some people to accept a face-to-face conversation.
He did however, offer up a quote that seems to make a lot of sense and gives some insight about how we would go about being upfront and engaged with the ones we love.
“Spend more time with people, less time in front of a screen, and—since we’re all in it together—be nice to people.”
In my opinion, Ansari sums up how twisted things can become from an iMessage to a Tinder message, using real conversations between him and his significant other.
He is completely candid throughout the entire memior and allows the reader inside of his dating life and his constant struggles and triumphs with dating in the modern digital age.
I would give this book an A, for the amount of examples he uses, to the real screen shots of messages between him and his former dates, all the way up to his current serious significant other.
Mary Curtin can be contacted at mcurtin@kscequinox.com
