Avant-Garde Romance

An even more recent discussion of Modern Romance, by Aziz Ansari

Love. Love never changes. Until it does. As a quintessential bachelor living in modernity, I am uniquely primed to receive and discuss Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance. Yes, it is a book by that funny squirmy dude who made DJ Roomba. Yes, it is comical, but it is also surprisingly informative qualitative research into a topic that I feel is a gap in our collective knowledge base – romance. Plenty of people want to give their two cents on the subject: parents and grandparents patiently waiting for that grandchild spot, friends who think they know best, absolutely gut-churning romantic vampire fiction, and of course, whatever romantic interest du jour has popped up in your particular sphere of existence. Everyone has some idea of what romance should be, and what it should constitute in their lives. But a refreshingly semi-objective approach, one taken on a large scale, is one of the few informative uses I could imagine for sociology¹. That is why I dig this book, and wish to talk about it with y’all today.

Aziz has two primary theses that interconnect the content of his work. I mean, shit is real different nowadays. Particularly, things are different for relationships in terms of a) availability and b) content. Romantic relationships are simultaneously more difficult and easier to obtain. The depth to which a given relationship goes, its raison d’être, has shifted dramatically when compared to relationships forged even 20 years ago. It’s all over the dang place and it is a very sharp, drastic change in an incredibly short time-frame. Just ask someone a decade or so older than you.

First, I would like to address availability. Look at what you are doing. You are on a computerized device of some sort. That is pretty unusual in a historical context. This is no less strange in a romantic context. One point Aziz emphasizes is that there are more options than ever before for meeting a new partner. This is, of course, thanks to the internet. I can barely recall, in the cobwebbed recesses of my mind, having to call someone’s house and ask for that person to come to the phone. People, once upon a time, had to come a-callin’ in order to spend time with friends, family, and eventually mates. With the advent of cell phones, this became easier, but the true power of these devices was not realized for a couple decades. One particularly poignant anecdote that occurs to me is how my father used the first cellphone plan we ever had. He got these gigantic Nextel flip phones and would use this AMAZING, PATENT-PENDING FEATURE…Push-to-talk. There was 13 year old me, breaking hearts and taking names out in the world, when suddenly there was some chirping bullshit happening in my pants. Breaker Breaker One Nine, Please Make Sure You Are In The Jenkinson’s Parking Lot By 10:30. Over. So impossibly uncool; Kurt Cobain would not approve. But the drive, the need for instantaneous communication was there, even then. That PTT would eventually evolve into texting – the instantaneous ability to communicate a small idea or imperative. Even better, texting was passive. Instead of getting into shit because I didn’t answer my dad, the information he was trying to convey would no longer be lost. It would just be suspended until I read it and responded. I was instead given the chance to calmly construct a thoughtful, concise response –NO YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP DAD >:-( . But something curious happened. Texting, instead of being a supplement to communication, took the forefront. Most people in my generation, and the generations following mine, primarily use texting to communicate. We, sometimes vexingly, have long and elaborate conversations via text. I think this is because it’s very anti-anxiety to get time to yourself to think out a response.² This extends to the realm of love, a traditional arena for anxiety.

Aziz discusses some of the specifics of romance via text – the nervous tension as you anticipate a response (but not too early, can’t seem desperate!), the brutal deliberation over the intention of what was written. ³ In itself, it is a fascinating jumping-off point for discovery. I’d love to work out the meaning behind all these strange, evolving interactions in an entirely new medium. But that isn’t the point I am trying to make here. I think what is most crucial about something like texting ( and its love-child with personal classifieds – dating apps) is that they are in a written format. This is tied closely with the concepts of Availability and Content.

That the modern age preferences text over personal communication is not surprising. We are inundated by information constantly; were it not for texting, we would still be consuming massive amounts of digital, written media daily. We have become more word-minded (if not a bit more erudite), so of course that will extend into our personal lives. Furthermore, our words are becoming broad-spectrum in their audience. We are now encountering people who have grown up, from the start, with access to a network that connects them to the entire world. Children grow up with YouTube channels broadcasting the inanity of their Minecraft sessions to potentially millions of people. As a result, we think more on the large-scale side when unconsciously and consciously considering our audience. In online dating, this translates into questions of scope. How many people can I physically meet given my free time allotment? How many people could I go out with in my area? How many sexy red-heads be up in this bitch per square mile? It’s no longer about the girl next door, about happening to meet that special someone in the course of daily life. Instead of hoping for the right person to come into our lives, we send out a Technicolor broadcast into the world. It is our ticket to entry into a vast ocean of romantic potential. Once we get there, as the internet has taught us, we sift through the possibilities and parse them into a more meaningful rated order.⁴ We choose, based on that arbitrary order, to give someone the opportunity to date us. Then we repeat the process…indefinitely…until I guess we get sick of it? Or something. Fall in love? Settle Down? I’m not really sure. This part hasn’t been developed too much yet. I haven’t the faintest idea where it all leads, for you see, there is very little actual romance in this romantic digital dance. And that is the issue with availability Aziz brings up. Too many choices dehumanize the whole process. To help illustrate this I will give you, dear reader, some insight into my own dating process on OkCupid. Please don’t judge me (though it seems I certainly judge you). On any given day, the following may occur:

1. Rather paradoxically, I am either bored or excited enough to be motivated to meet a lovely lady with whom I can share my heart and soul. This does not happen most days.
2. I open The App. I am bombarded by stupid messages about monetizing the process. Thanks Obama.
3. I will, based on a semi-conscious understanding of economical utility, check out anyone who has visited me. Their evaluation process is the same as follows, minus the matching criteria.
4. If I have not had any visitors, or I have not become exhausted with the perceived futility of the endeavor, I will browse some matches.
5. Filter: (I remind you, I am doing this to Human Beings, with Feelings, Hopes, Dreams, and Aspirations) Match % and Distance within 10 mi. (over 10 miles? Fuck thattttt love isn’t worth driving 20 minutes I guess). Age 22-30. Must be active on site. Don’t care about height. Hey, maybe this hasn’t made me a robotized shallowness algorithm!
6. Oh god, I am a robotized shallowness algorithm. With a coldness unparalleled in the real world, I browse a list of faces (AGAIN I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH, THESE ARE FACES OF REAL, LIVING PEOPLE) and within 0.5 to 2 seconds decide if they are gross to me. I have innumerable and often inscrutable criteria to determine this, so I guess we can just boil it down to gut instinct. Because these people have been determined to be worthless to me, I immediately hide them, never to be seen again. These women could have been astronauts, Nobel laureates, or goddamn presidents of the United States. Unfortunately, I will never know because they pic is stanky.
7. When I find someone who strikes my fancy, then -ONLY THEN- will I consider her other traits. I click. I read. Based on even more arbitrary criteria, and a second examination of her pictures, I will craft a message.
8. Crafting a message used to be a huge deal. Aziz mentions the trepidation some men experience when doing this. When I first became a single gentleman, I can recall the absolute angst that went into each finely-tuned little opus of word-craft. Today I have learned that the best thing to do is pretend I have a something akin to Tourette’s Syndrome. Channeling my inner Id, I simply blurt out whatever unconsciously stood out most and held my interest, usually in a way that is funny. I paid attention! I am humorous! This puts me in a good position.
9. 9/10 times I get no answer. I used to think this was because I was terrible. Aziz knows, and I know, this is not the case. The whole internet dating game is absolutely 100% a ridiculously one-sided sausage fest. Having had the honor and privilege to get to know many women from the Internets, I have taken to – even if the date isn’t going well – trying to talk a little about their profile. It is absolutely flooring to see how much shit they are inundated with. I get maybe a couple unsolicited messages a month (that is, a girl messages me first). As of this writing I have 70 likes, which fluctuates by around ~10 any given week. These poor women have thousands of likes. Tens to hundreds of daily visitors. They are drowned in messages from dudes being all “Hey” “Sup” “Yo” “*Dick Picture*”. And repeat offenders, too! Dudes who will, without fail, for months, continue to message “Hey, how are you?” over and over again. It looks like the contents of a mental institution transcript.
10. Repeat this process until bored, disheartened, or successful enough that I don’t feel like initiating any more dates.

If you don’t hate me, if you respect my honesty on this, you can see (hopefully) that I am not entirely a monster. I am a product of the system which hath moulded me. Given a low probability of success, I have learned (as my computer robot brain sector observed) to treat the endeavor with much less attention than I would someone I met in real life. Arguably, I give more attention to real life people I actively dislike than people I am attracted to on the internet. This is actually preferential behavior. Aziz explains that when asked, women find lengthy messages fatiguing, creepy, or otherwise to be less effective than something short and sweet. The world of texting has taken its toll. I would argue that women want to cut the shit. Given the reverse position, I wouldn’t want to read some lengthy diatribe about how my admiration for Battlestar Galactica Really Makes Us Soulmates.

Similarly, I am much more flexible and understanding in real life when it comes to perceived flaws. I am not a perfect specimen, and I expect no one else to be. Yet, my insistence that a woman not have a hair bump in her picture or else she Just Isn’t For Me seems to be contradictory to this assertion. As above, I have learned this is a high-attrition arena. I am a human being, and I can only absorb a finite amount of disappointment. For me to maintain my current standard of messaging quality and attentiveness (as low as it already may seem), I have to hold high standards, because even with the lopsidedness of the population, there are still thousands of potential women.⁵ If I just spam hundreds of women with “Hey!” I become the enemy, and I open myself up to that much more potential rejection. My mind can only rationally perceive the cognitive dissonance here. Human brains are weird, and so I become hyper-selective in this artificial realm.

Ultimately, it all boils down to my primary, #1 goal in internet dating: not having to do internet dating anymore. Cutting through all the available options and going on a real date so I can have a meaningful, interesting connection. Thankfully, mercifully, this seems to be everyone’s goal. Texting hasn’t changed the emotional landscape in the way that might have been expected. Instead of making us desensitized or robotic, it is simply regulating, ad-hoc style, the new landscape which is has borne out. Texting and the algorithmic approach only exist to keep us all from constantly getting over-invested in the romantic world we have created. With this many potential mates, we need to infuse the process with coldness and distance, or we risk being overwhelmed. Only when I meet someone can I -Just Know- if I am into them, if I like them, if I want to spend more time with them, or sleep with them, or develop any sort of future with them. I am still human, and I think we are all still human.

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Stay Tuned for Part 2, The Relationship wherein I discusseth the Content of Romance in the Modern Age. Shout out and mad props to my man, Aziz Ansari, who is totally my IRL friend, and who has frequently referred to me as bae.

1. If you recall from previous entries, I think sociology is totally lame and bogus. Sociology can suck it.
2. I love it.
3. Aziz uses the example“OH GOD DID I USE TOO MANY ‘They’s?????????” I shudder to think how close to home this strikes.
4. Interesting here, that given the already discussed anti-anxiety effects of slow and deliberate thought, that we find another reaction mechanism to anxiety. Traditionally, repetitive, compulsive actions also soothe the anxious soul. Perhaps, when we become selective, and message with abstraction and artificial distance, we allay some of the pain and trepidation of putting ourselves out there in the dating process?
5. Which is insane, if you think about it. Like thousands. To quote Keanu Reeve’s Neo in the seminal hit, The Matrix: “Woah.”