Modern Romance

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comedic voicesAt some point, every one of us embarks on ajourney to find love. We meet people, date, getinto and out of relationships, all with the hopeof finding someone with whom we share a deepconnection. This seems standard now, but itswildly different from what people did even justdecades ago. Single people today have moreromantic options than at any point in humanhistory. With technology, our abilities to connectwith and sort through these options are staggering.So why are so many people frustrated?Some of our problems are unique to our time.Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?Should I go out with this girl even though shelisted Combos as one of her favorite snack foods?Combos?! My girlfriend just got a message fromsome dude named Nathan. Whos Nathan? Did hejust send her a photo of his penis? Should I checkjust to be sure?But the transformation of our romantic livescant be explained by technology alone. In a shortperiod of time, the whole culture of finding lovehas changed dramatically. A few decades ago,people would find a decent person who lived intheir neighborhood. Their families would meetand, after deciding neither party seemed like amurderer, they would get married and soon havea kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today,people marry later than ever and spend years oftheir lives on a quest to find the perfect person, asoul mate.For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming hiscomic insight at modern romance, but for ModernRomance, the book, he decided he needed to takethings to another level. He teamed up with NYUsociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massiveresearch project, including hundreds of interviewsand focus groups conducted everywhere fromTokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzedbehavioral data and surveys and created their ownonline research forum on Reddit, which drewthousands of messages. They enlisted the worldsleading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, HelenFisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, SherryTurkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike anysocial science or humor book weve seen before.In Modern Romance, Ansari combines hisirreverent humor with cutting-edge social scienceto give us an unforgettable tour of our newromantic world.