Modern Romance
Modern Romance | Aziz Ansari
This week’s read is sort of like a book recommendation. Most of the update was done before my hiatus from writing but I couldn’t find a good way to conclude it. As you might have noticed, the latest updates have been focused on my most recent relationship. As a result, I thought about how that relationship fit into the scope of “modern romance.” It provided a way for me to connect to the book and offer a conclusion to the update.
As mentioned above, I didn’t pick up this book because of my recent break up. I read this book in the beginning of the year, about the time when allegations against Aziz Ansari came out. My first reaction was to take a break from the book and read a couple of short stories. I eventually decided to continue reading the book to completion.
The title of this book explains its premise pretty well. This book is about dating and relationships in the current environment. From my friends’ summaries of the book, I thought this book would mostly focus on online dating and the current slew of dating apps. I was pleasantly surprised to find out the book covers more than that. It gives a bit of historical context on romance. It also goes beyond just dating and looks at how technology has transformed long-term relationships and marriage.
Since it’s been over two years since the book has come out, I was already familiar with some of the material. I feel like a few of the episodes in Ansari’s show, Master of None, pulls its theme straight out of the book. I can understand why Aziz wanted to do the television series. He could get his message out to more people by presenting it in another medium.
I could relate to the book in many ways because my last relationship was heavily influenced by current technology. I wouldn’t have gotten my former girlfriend’s number if it wasn’t for Facebook. And I’m positive the long distance part of our relationship would have been much harder without FaceTime and Snapchat. These services helped shrink the distance and made me feel more connected to her.
However, I’m also currently experiencing the downside of being so easily connected. I dread logging onto social media and seeing her pictures pop up. However, this may be an unfounded fear because I haven’t seen too many posts about her. Additionally, I hate to admit it but I have gone through Instagram to see if she deleted our pictures together or, even worse, blocked me from her feed. These are inconveniences that past generations didn’t have to face but they also didn’t have the benefits I described earlier. I haven’t decided if it’s better or worst, it’s just different and what I have to deal with now.