Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari, Eric Klinenberg Read Free Book Online Page A

someone and had been texting back and forth. If they had, they would come up to the stage and I would pick a few people and read, analyze, and ask them about what was happening in their messages.
    At this particular show I was speaking with Rachel, who had met a guy at a good friend’s wedding. As it happened, the guy was also a friend of her sister’s, so he had a pretty good shot at a first date with her. She was single. She was interested. All he had to do was send her a simple message introducing himself and asking her to do something.
    Here’s what happened.
    He sends his first message:

    As soon as I said “texty,” it was clear that no one sitting in the 3,600-seat Chicago Theatre would ever fuck this dude in a million years. “Texty,” for whatever reason, seemed to be unequivocally disgusting to every one of us there.
    He might as well have added: “BTW I have a really disgusting next-level STD! Haha :-) but for real I do.”
    Rachel wrote back ten minutes later:

    He wrote back shortly:

    Rachel never met Will. After a few messages of this nature, Rachel stopped responding. None of us know Will. He may be a kind, handsome man with a heart of gold. But all we have to go on is those messages. And those messages have shaped in our minds a very dorky, terrifyingly Caucasian weirdo. Everything from “texty” to “tooooootally” to “Feliz Cumpleaños as well!” had destroyed all chances of Rachel’s wanting to meet Will in real life. So please, don’t let anyone tell you what you text someone doesn’t matter. If they don’t believe you, “texty” introduce them to Will and they’ll toooooootally change their mind.
    The interesting thing about text is that, as a medium, it separates you from the person you are speaking with, so you can act differently from how you would in person or even on the phone. In
Alone Together
Sherry Turkle tells the story of a young boy who had a standing appointment for a Sunday dinner with his grandparents. Every week, he’d want to cancel and his mom would tell him to call his grandparents and tell them he wasn’t coming. However, he never would, because he couldn’t bear to hear the disappointment in their voices. If it were text, though, he probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it. As a medium, it’s safe to say, texting facilitates flakiness and rudeness and many other personality traits that would not be expressed in a phone call or an in-person interaction.
    Beyond flakiness, as far as dating goes, I’ve observed many men who, while hopefully decent human beings in person, become sexually aggressive “douche monsters” when hiding behind the texts on their phone. The messages being sent are inarguably inappropriate and often quite offensive, but, again, over text the consequences of the recipient’s being offended are minimal. You don’t see their face. You don’t hear their voice. And they aren’t there in person to look horrified or throw a heavy object at your dumb head.
    On the other hand, on the tiny off chance they are interested, you are all set. It’s this dim hope that many dumb dudes are clinging to when they send these painfully obnoxious texts.
    A website called Straight White Boys Texting has become a hub for women to submit these horrifying (and often hilarious) texts that guys have sent them.
    As described on the site, the blog came about due to the phenomenon in which a guy texts an inept sexual advance like “ hey what’s your bra size ;)
”
or “ what would you do if you were here haha lol ;)
”
apropos of nothing, in order to try to hook up with someone.
    This was known as a “straight white boy text,” hence the name of the blog, but, to be clear, the site is inclusive of douchey dudes of all races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations.
    Here are a few favorites of mine:

    This gentleman wastes no time. What’s interesting to me, though, is would this guy ever act this way in real life? Doubtful that he’d just go up