"What?"
"Postmodern."
"What does that even mean?"
"Exactly, it's Postmodern."
He swipes left, left, left again. He pauses, flicks through some pictures; swipes left. He swipes right. He swipes left. She zooms in, peruses mutuals, rejects the request. He doesn't like peanut butter; therefore, he's not The One. She seems nice, she's pretty, she's smart. So much potential. Ah! But wait. She liked Evita and I just can't stand musicals. She's a No then. Such are the woes of modern romance. Or so intimates Aziz Ansari in the international bestseller, 'Modern Romance: An Investigation'.
He's right. I've seen such things amongst my peers; heard countless tales of Tinder and seen countless so-called chick-flicks where the main FEMALE character (think tropes like Bridget Jones or Elle Woods) are longing for love and loathing their singledom amidst an inability to bag The Guy IRL (that's In Real Life, the Modern way) and so resort to some means of being set up or finding someone online (note - the Bridget Jones/Elle Woods allusion only extends as far as the ditzy female character trope); and, I've been on the receiving end of people despairing over their lack of romance in real life. Our search for partners is more aestheticised and idealised than it once was, where our grandparents, say, would more readily settle for the person they'd known since childhood or who lived around the block (assuming such an equivalent person exists today as an option). The science and the patterns explored in conjunction with several social scientists and in collaboration with Eric Klinenberg are fascinating and point to undeniable trends in the way romance is perused in the modern climate. People are increasingly reluctant to settle for anything less than The Boy/Girl Next Door (think more Soul Mate than Hey, He's Got A Decent Salary And Seems Like A Nice Chap), are more reticent to settle down in their early twenties, are increasingly reliant upon forms of social media and online dating platforms to meet romantic interests, hold differing views to older generations with respect to such things as sexting and infidelity, and the like. But I'm still reticent to accept it; to engage with it. I still like the notion that you can meet someone in real life (not IRL) and cultivate a relationship which is not dictated by nor subject to the world of virtual reality.
But then, you should question me: is this itself not just another situated, romanticised ideal borne of the ways in which modern romance is conducted? Am I myself not subject to the trap of the Internet, which Ansari so brilliantly highlights? Surely this is just another version of The One, The Ideal?