Culled from two blog posts of May 14 and May 21, 2016.
Review of "Modern Romance"
By C. Randall Nicholson
Over the course of a week or so visiting Hasting's I read a book called "Modern Romance", written by comedian Aziz Ansari of "Parks and Recreation" fame, in conjunction with sociologist Eric Klinenberg. It explores how dating and marriage have evolved with the advent of texting, Facebook, Tinder, etcetera, and does so very tongue-in-cheekly yet on the basis of scientific studies and interviews and focus groups and stuff. It was very informative and fascinating. I have no interest in consenting to these asinine games, but learning about them as an outside observer for knowledge's own sake is quite enjoyable. Here are the main pertinent points I gleaned from it:
Introduction - I'm a comedian, but this book is legit, I promise.
Chapter 1 - Women used to marry any old bozos from their hometowns so they could move out of their parents' houses, but now thanks to the whole equality thing they want to find "soul mates".
Chapter 2 - Your paranoia about finding the exact right word choice for a text message is not merely justified but probably insufficient, because yes, your future could hinge on it.
Chapter 3 - Online dating has its ups and downs but ideally should just be a first step and at some point lead to getting off the internet.
Chapter 4 - People are almost paralyzed by the wealth of options they have these days, and afraid to commit to someone when someone else they like more could be just around the corner.
Chapter 5 - Japan is doomed because no one wants to reproduce, while Argentina is a haven for misogyny, but what they have in common is they're both full of perverts.
Chapter 6 - Your statistical odds of finding a partner who will never cheat on you are pretty abysmal. In France, people are okay with that.
Chapter 7 - Passionate love fades after twelve to eighteen months and is then hopefully replaced by companionate love, which isn't as great, but reaps far more over a lifetime.
Conclusion - I'm a comedian, but that doesn't mean I can't be thoughtful and introspective.
After reading this, I agreed with the author's conviction that all this modern technology is no more inherently bad or disruptive than the telephone or the television or anything else. Although the games that people play with dating are stupid, there's nothing wrong with bringing texting and stuff into it. Texting is not the problem. People are the problem.
Ansari is an Indian and in the book he mentions that his parents had an arranged marriage and that it suited them just fine. Arranged marriages have their share of advantages and for the most part I don't think they're as bad as Americans might be prone to think, and that they just represent a different philosophy wherein marriage represents the beginning of a love affair rather than the end, but one time I said all this to an Indian in an attempt to show off my cultural sensitivity and he was just like "Eh, it isn't that great." It's interesting how old and new beliefs and practices are colliding in Indian culture. I had a couple of other Indian friends who married each other the Western non-arranged way, but the guy was like, "Man, I'm just lucky. If you'd gotten here first, she would've been all yours. But there's multiple lives, man. You can have her in the next one."
Arranged marriage seems barbaric to many modern sensibilities because it mostly removes choice from the equation, and modern sensibilities love choice. This, however, leads to another problem mentioned in the book, where so many options are available that one becomes paralyzed by indecision. I've often had this problem with myriad things, which is why I often procrastinate my decisions until the last minute when my only choice is to scramble and stop everything from imploding. It's not always fun but it's worked out for me so far. That's how I ended up in an apartment complex with all those Indians, and they were/are some of my favorite people ever. Anyway, I hate decisions where there's no clear "good, better, best" because all the options are just "different" and I don't have many particular preferences one way or another. In dating, I just want someone who's honest and kind and female, and beyond that I don't even have a preference for something so basic and huge as introvert vs. extrovert. It's much easier to avoid choosing altogether.
Tinder, which is also discussed in the book as one of the "modern" parts of "modern romance", has such a taboo against it that for the longest time I thought it was a porn site. Almost everyone who admits to having a Tinder feels the need to preface it with a disclaimer about how they never imagined getting one, aren't really the type to get one, just got one for the laughs or out of curiosity, etcetera. They're afraid of being seen as desperate and shallow. In the book, Ansari argues that it isn't really shallow because swiping right on the people you find attractive isn't really that different from just approaching the people you find attractive in real life, which is what everyone does. I would counter-argue that this is still shallow, but no more so than standard human interactions which are shallow to begin with. But it's evolution's fault so that's okay.
The book cites brain scans demonstrating the difference between passionate and companionate love and that the former inevitably dies after twelve to eighteen months, hopefully to be superseded by the latter. People who refuse to acknowledge this or think they'll somehow be an exception are setting themselves up for a rough time. It sounds all fine and dandy to me in theory, but when my dad said one time that being married is like having another sister, that was a really really really really really really big turn-off. I have enough sisters. I have three real sisters and one imaginary sister that I made up as a joke because whenever we got in the van to go somewhere my parents counted us to make sure we were all there, and I thought Come on, there's only four of us, we're not that hard to keep track of, so I started saying, "We forgot Rachel!" and it caught on. I love my four sisters, but if I wanted another sibling I would ask for a brother because I don't have any of those.
Introduction - I'm a comedian, but this book is legit, I promise.
Chapter 1 - Women used to marry any old bozos from their hometowns so they could move out of their parents' houses, but now thanks to the whole equality thing they want to find "soul mates".
Chapter 2 - Your paranoia about finding the exact right word choice for a text message is not merely justified but probably insufficient, because yes, your future could hinge on it.
Chapter 3 - Online dating has its ups and downs but ideally should just be a first step and at some point lead to getting off the internet.
Chapter 4 - People are almost paralyzed by the wealth of options they have these days, and afraid to commit to someone when someone else they like more could be just around the corner.
Chapter 5 - Japan is doomed because no one wants to reproduce, while Argentina is a haven for misogyny, but what they have in common is they're both full of perverts.
Chapter 6 - Your statistical odds of finding a partner who will never cheat on you are pretty abysmal. In France, people are okay with that.
Chapter 7 - Passionate love fades after twelve to eighteen months and is then hopefully replaced by companionate love, which isn't as great, but reaps far more over a lifetime.
Conclusion - I'm a comedian, but that doesn't mean I can't be thoughtful and introspective.
After reading this, I agreed with the author's conviction that all this modern technology is no more inherently bad or disruptive than the telephone or the television or anything else. Although the games that people play with dating are stupid, there's nothing wrong with bringing texting and stuff into it. Texting is not the problem. People are the problem.
Ansari is an Indian and in the book he mentions that his parents had an arranged marriage and that it suited them just fine. Arranged marriages have their share of advantages and for the most part I don't think they're as bad as Americans might be prone to think, and that they just represent a different philosophy wherein marriage represents the beginning of a love affair rather than the end, but one time I said all this to an Indian in an attempt to show off my cultural sensitivity and he was just like "Eh, it isn't that great." It's interesting how old and new beliefs and practices are colliding in Indian culture. I had a couple of other Indian friends who married each other the Western non-arranged way, but the guy was like, "Man, I'm just lucky. If you'd gotten here first, she would've been all yours. But there's multiple lives, man. You can have her in the next one."
Arranged marriage seems barbaric to many modern sensibilities because it mostly removes choice from the equation, and modern sensibilities love choice. This, however, leads to another problem mentioned in the book, where so many options are available that one becomes paralyzed by indecision. I've often had this problem with myriad things, which is why I often procrastinate my decisions until the last minute when my only choice is to scramble and stop everything from imploding. It's not always fun but it's worked out for me so far. That's how I ended up in an apartment complex with all those Indians, and they were/are some of my favorite people ever. Anyway, I hate decisions where there's no clear "good, better, best" because all the options are just "different" and I don't have many particular preferences one way or another. In dating, I just want someone who's honest and kind and female, and beyond that I don't even have a preference for something so basic and huge as introvert vs. extrovert. It's much easier to avoid choosing altogether.
Tinder, which is also discussed in the book as one of the "modern" parts of "modern romance", has such a taboo against it that for the longest time I thought it was a porn site. Almost everyone who admits to having a Tinder feels the need to preface it with a disclaimer about how they never imagined getting one, aren't really the type to get one, just got one for the laughs or out of curiosity, etcetera. They're afraid of being seen as desperate and shallow. In the book, Ansari argues that it isn't really shallow because swiping right on the people you find attractive isn't really that different from just approaching the people you find attractive in real life, which is what everyone does. I would counter-argue that this is still shallow, but no more so than standard human interactions which are shallow to begin with. But it's evolution's fault so that's okay.
The book cites brain scans demonstrating the difference between passionate and companionate love and that the former inevitably dies after twelve to eighteen months, hopefully to be superseded by the latter. People who refuse to acknowledge this or think they'll somehow be an exception are setting themselves up for a rough time. It sounds all fine and dandy to me in theory, but when my dad said one time that being married is like having another sister, that was a really really really really really really big turn-off. I have enough sisters. I have three real sisters and one imaginary sister that I made up as a joke because whenever we got in the van to go somewhere my parents counted us to make sure we were all there, and I thought Come on, there's only four of us, we're not that hard to keep track of, so I started saying, "We forgot Rachel!" and it caught on. I love my four sisters, but if I wanted another sibling I would ask for a brother because I don't have any of those.
